FUNDING for Tamworth schools is set to increase by millions of dollars over the next 10 years, but the Teachers Federation says the numbers don’t add up.
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Federal government figures released on Tuesday have revealed a cash windfall for schools in the Tamworth region in a second version of the controversial Gonski funding model. It will mean cash injections into public schools, with reported cuts to some private campuses.
New figures show Tamworth High School’s funding will increase by $7.2 million over the next ten years, while Tamworth Public School will receive a boost of $6.9 million. Peel High School could have an extra $8.5 million by 2027, with an extra $4 million for Hillvue Public School. Private schools will also see an increase in funds, with Carinya Christian School’s funding to increase by $16 million and McCarthy Catholic College by $23 million.
Regional Teachers Federation organiser Tim Danaher said students should not be left waiting for funding. “It goes nowhere near to addressing closing the resource gap and ensuring all schools get to the resource standard they should be,” he said.
“Our schools have been shortchanged and this new agreement does nothing to address the disadvantage of our regional and rural students and doesn’t give them what they need. They are looking at a 10-to-20 year period before reaching the minimum school resource standards under this model.”
Catholic Schools director in the Armidale Diocese Chris Smyth was concerned the figures would promote “uninformed analysis” of how the funding is allocated.
“The promised annual indexation of funding increases from 2018 to 2020 will enable us to say to parents that our current processes for the setting of school fees will remain unchanged and that any annual adjustment to school fees will be modest,” he said.
“We are pleased that funding of $300m over ten years will be provided through an improved Commonwealth capital grants arrangement to help disadvantaged non-government schools. “The lack of capital for school development continues to impact on the Catholic sector in rural and regional areas. Please be assured that we will continue to explore ways of enhancing the resources and funding that impact on student learning, wellbeing and faith formation for each student in our Catholic schools.”
