A new funding agreement being signed on Wednesday, will shape the future of Australia’s 10,000 schools, with a firm focus on the number of teenagers dropping out of secondary school.
The Better and Fairer Schools Agreement (BFSA) sets out a suite of new national measures designed to slow down the downward trend in Australian schools.
The BFSA will be signed in Darwin and reveals a range of major changes facing Australia’s four million school students.
“We have a good education system, but it can be a lot better and fairer,” says federal Education Minister Jason Clare.
“The number of kids finishing high school is going backwards. In the last seven years, it’s dropped from 85 per cent to 79 per cent. In public schools, the drop is even bigger, from 83 per cent to 73.6 per cent.”
Earlier interventions and improved outcomes
These changes will include a series of new tests to allow earlier interventions and improve performance across all Australian schools, with extra money delivered in return.
“I have made clear that the additional $16 billion of funding for public schools I have put on the table will be tied to reforms,” Clare says. “Reforms that will help kids catch up, keep up and finish school.”
The new agreement also introduces a new national phonics check for all year one students across the country, with plans for a similar foundational numeracy check also proposed.
NAPLAN results also need a boost, with the number of students needing additional support to be cut from 30 per cent to 20 per cent.
Increasing school attendance rates to pre-COVID levels of 91.4 per cent – up from 88.6 per cent in 2023 – is another key focus, while year 12 Indigenous completion rates will be required to meet closing the gap targets of 96 per cent by 2031, up from 68.4 per cent in 2021.
A push to lift the number of teachers studying at university by 10 per cent and provide better support as they start their careers is also highlighted in the report.
So far, negotiations around the agreement have delayed the new school funding agreement by a year, with more than 60 meetings with the nation’s education ministers.
Greater equity needed in Australian schools
Critics have highlighted what they describe as a ‘segregated’ education system, where public schools educate Australia’s most disadvantaged students.
“We talk about concentration of disadvantage which is an opaque name for how complicated and complex public school classrooms are,” says South Australia’s Minister for Education, Training and Skills, Blair Boyer.
“That means how many students in the classroom need some kind of additional support, it might be autism, it might be really struggling with literacy or numeracy.”
Boyer says Australia’s funding system had improved but would remain unfair while public schools fell short of their targets outlined in the 2012 Gonski review.