More money for Mayo schools under Gonski 2.0

Posted June 26, 2017

The 66 schools in Mayo will all pocket extra money from the $1.5 billion in additional Federal funds promised for South Australia in the next decade under the Gonski 2.0 education reforms, according to local Federal MP Rebekha Sharkie.

“The Nick Xenophon Team has successfully advocated for changes to the Government’s original Gonski 2.0 legislation which will benefit all Australian children, including – I am pleased to say – the 22,000 students in Mayo,” Rebekha said.

“Our negotiations put an extra $4.9 billion into the reforms, increasing the funding pool from $18.6 billion to $23.5 billion.

“That includes an additional $424 million for South Australia’s 718 schools, taking the total injection of funds from the Gonski reforms to $1.5 billion for the State.

“But more importantly, NXT has lobbied for the bulk of those increases to be rolled out to Australia’s underfunded schools in the next six years rather than being stretched over the 10 years of the reforms.

“We didn’t think it was fair that children who started school next year would have to wait until they were 15 to experience the full benefits of the funding reforms.

“If the Bill hadn’t passed, it would have taken 150 years for overfunded schools to reach parity with underfunded schools.”

Rebekha said the Minister’s office had been unable to provide exact funding calculations for each individual school in Mayo under the Gonski 2.0 amendments, which were passed in a marathon sitting of Parliament late last week.

“However, I know from original figures provided by Minister Birmingham that funding across Government, Independent and Catholic schools in Mayo was going to increase, on average, from $4301 per student in 2017 to $6936 in 2027,” Rebekha said.

“Now there is now more money in the funding pool so that can only be good news for our students.”

Mayo has 21,815 students enrolled in 49 Government schools, 14 Independent schools and three Catholic schools.

Besides the funding increase and the shorter transition period for underfunded schools, NXT also secured agreements from the Government to set up a National Schools Resourcing Board to review funding methodology.

“One of the first tasks of the Board will be to review the Socio-Economic Standard calculations to make sure the Government’s funding methodology best reflects parents' capacity to pay,” Rebekha said.

“NXT also lobbied for measures to ensure states and territories met their obligations to contribute to schools funding.

“This means that by 2023 all schools in Australia will receive at least 95% of their target Schooling Resource Standard funding.”