A PRIMARY school student enrolled in a local public school receives up to twice the government funding allocated to a student in a similar size Catholic school, new figures reveal.
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The Federal Government launched its MySchool 2.0 website last month, detailing for the first time the government and parent contributions collected at every school across Australia.
The Western Advocate has broken down the figures for all public, Catholic and independent schools across Bathurst, revealing some enormous funding discrepancies.
As could be expected, the region’s smallest public schools receive the highest funding per student, with two even topping the funding per-student allocated to the Carenne School for students with disabilities.
Burraga Public School, with just seven students enrolled in 2009 when the figures were collected, was granted a total of $287,214 in state and federal funding – $41,031 per student.
Next came Rockley Public School, which received $39,305 for each of its nine students, while Carenne received an average of $36,148 for each of its 78 students.
But a study of the larger primary schools provides a more meaningful comparison.
The region’s six biggest primary schools – Bathurst Public, Bathurst West Public, Eglinton Public, Assumption School, the Cathedral School and Holy Family School – each had between 350 and 410 students enrolled in 2009.
But there was a huge variation in the government funding provided to the three public schools and the three from the Catholic system.
Bathurst Public had the highest per-student funding of $11,345, comprising $9802 from the State Government and $1543 from the Federal Government. Next came Bathurst West [$9689] and Eglinton [$8389], with the three Catholic schools well behind.
The Assumption School received $6254 for each of its 356 students, with $1785 coming from the State Government and $4469 from the Federal Government.
The Cathedral School received $5881 per student in combined government funding and Kelso’s Holy Family School just $5444 – the lowest of any Bathurst region school.
Among local high schools, Kelso High received the highest government funding per student [$14,802] followed by Bathurst High [$11,167], MacKillop College [$10,627] and St Stanislaus’ College [$8391].
The two independent schools, All Saints’ College [$6097] and The Scots School [$6754], received lower per-student funding but their figures have been averaged out across their kindergarten to Year 12 students, making a direct comparison impossible.
