Scott Morrison has announced a $4.6 billion federal government handout to independent and Catholic schools. 

Changes to the way funding is allocated will result in a $3.2 billion funding increase from 2019 to 2020. An additional “Choice and Affordability Fund”, worth $1.2 billion, will be made available to Catholic and independent schools to spend however they choose from 2020 onwards. 

On top of all this, private schools will get a bonus $170.8 million for 2019. 

Morrison’s move follows a significant backlash from the Catholic schools and right wing against the Turnbull government’s 2017 changes to private school funding arrangements. 

Prior to the changes, funding was allocated to each private schooling system by calculating the average socio-economic status of schools across the system. This meant that, for example, a high socio-economic status Catholic school could benefit from the extra funding that comes with the Catholic sector’s averaged socio-economic score. The Catholic schools peak body was also able to allocate the funding to individual schools however they wished. 

The socio-economic status of private schools was based on the average of the geographical location of the school, not the status of the parents, which significantly inflated these schools’ funding entitlements. 

Since the Howard era, Labor and Liberal governments have allocated funding on the basis that no school would be worse off, meaning that overfunded schools have remained that way.

Education department data, for example, show that Melbourne Grammar School received 144 percent of the funding it was entitled to in 2014. 

In 2017, this arrangement was replaced by one that allocated funding to each school based on its individual socio-economic status score. This took away the extra benefits for rich schools. 

The move aroused vicious opposition from both the National Catholic Education Commission and the right of the Liberal party, led by Tony Abbott. Morrison’s new funding injection is a concession to these forces. 

While Labor’s Tanya Plibersek has criticised the changes, labelling the extra $1.2 a “slush fund”, she has also attacked the government for not giving enough to wealthy schools, arguing that Labor “[doesn’t] believe this restores all of the money that has been cut from Catholic and independent schools”. In March, Labor leader Bill Shorten pledged an extra $250 million just for Catholic schools if Labor is elected. 

Labor has long been a suck for private schools. As prime minister, Kevin Rudd increased their funding by 32 percent in 2009, and Julia Gillard’s Gonski arrangement came with an assurance that no private school would lose a dollar. 

Australia allocates the greatest share of federal funding to private schools of any developed country, coming in at 19 percent of school spending in 2015. 

Public funding of private schools exacerbates inequality in the schooling system. It channels money that could be used to improve the quality of public schools on which poor and working class kids depend, toward private schools that serve the wealthy. 

In 2017, Caulfield Grammar, one of Australia’s wealthiest schools, received $5,051 per student in state and federal government funding, according to the My School website. That’s on top of the $26,062 each parent pays in fees. So all up, each child received $31,113 in funds for their education. 

Compare this to the $7,865 that each child receives in state and federal funding at Derinya Park Primary in Frankston, a working class public school. 

That more than $20,000 gap makes a huge difference to a child’s education. It helps ensure that kids who attend private schools skyrocket upward, through elite universities, into law firms and business management. And it severely limits the options available to working class kids.

It’s ordinary taxpayers who foot this bill. We’re forced to donate money to wealthy parents to ensure that their children continue to enjoy obscene privilege.