Public schools have long been under-funded for the learning challenges they face. In 2024, they were only funded at an average of 88% of their Schooling Resource Standard across Australia. By contrast, private schools were over-funded on average at 104% of their SRS.
The prime minister and education minister promised that the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement will fully fund public schools by 2034. This has already proved to be a false promise. New bilateral funding agreements with the New South Wales, Queensland, South Australian, Western Australian and Tasmanian Governments reveal that public schools will not be funded at 100% of their SRS by 2034 despite a significant planned boost in funding over the decade.
Its not necessarily clear from this article but all the NAPLAN data and other studies have shown that (in Australia) the school you attend has almost no influence on any valuable metric including academic success, long term income, self reported happiness etc. The factors that are most strongly predictive are parental income and parental education level. High-performing schools are just those that are in high income areas. It’s counter intuitive but it’s what the data reveals.
Review of outcomes across school sectors
Unless the public school has syringes in the sandpit save your money.
To an extent, this is true. It is certainly possible for a kid with drive and intelligence to excel at any school. The issues more arise from the other variables - if your kid is attending a school in a low socioeconomic area, there is a decent chance that the cohort do not prioritise doing well in class. Suddenly kids not only find themselves among peers where studying is not a priority, they find themselves disincentivised to do well so they don’t stand out.
If instead your child attends a school where it is socially acceptable to study and do well in class among their peers, they do.