Some Key Statistics

The Productivity Commission produces an Annual Report on Government Services, including an education section. These generally indicate that WA expenditure now compares favourably to that in other states and territories, and that it has improved in recent years.

In 1999 the Report on Government Services, using figures adjusted to 1996/97 amounts, showed that expenditure per government school student in WA had risen from $5214 in 1992/93 to $5884 in 1996/97. The Australian figures were $5451 and $5770. The 2000 Report showed that in 1997/98 WA spent $6258 and Australia $6037 (unadjusted amounts). (Taken from Report on Government Services 1999 and 2000).

Based on the figures in the 2000 Report (1997/98), WA spends above average at 104% of the Australian average.

However, disaggregation of these figures, as shown in the following table 1, shows that this favourable expenditure does not apply equally across the board. Table 1 shows the amount WA expends in the specified areas above or below this 104%. (Ie. –6% means an expenditure of 98%). This provides a useful initial analysis of the differences in WA., although of itself it should not be seen as definitive as there may be logical explanations, such as demographics, good centralised services, etc. (Out of school covers centralised and other non school based services).

(* This line is effectively a total of the other lines).

• Has high out of school expenditure. It spends 6% below its average in primary schools, 6% above in secondary schools, and 27% above in out of school expenditure.
• Appears to have exceptional super (?);
• Performs poorly in relation to most primary areas;
• Has high levels of capital expenditure.

The Commonwealth Grants Commission Annual Relativities Update (CGC) provides some useful points of comparison. They provide a "standard" and actual budget for each state and territory. The standard budget is effectively what the state can be expected to provide if it made the same effort as other states.

In this analysis, WA does not do so well, providing a level of service below "expectations", as shown in table 2 below. "Level of service" refers to the ratio between the actual expenditure and the amount that the CGC calculates needs to be spent taking into account the circumstances of the particular state. 100% is therefore the amount required to provide the "average" level of service.

(from CGC Level of Service Provision tables, Supporting Information p.273)

In can be seen that only in Non Government Schools (which will be dealt with separately below) does WA provide a level of service above that that the CGC calculates it could.

NRS gives per student expenditure figures. This table 3 shows per student expenditure in Government Schools 1997/98 (Includes both state and Commonwealth).

(NSR, Table 27, 1998)

WA expenditure has improved in recent years in comparison to the Australian average, and is now above average, as shown in this Table 4 which gives per student expenditure in government schools (unadjusted):

(NSR, various years).

Different states and territories fund non government schools in different ways. This is addition to Commonwealth funding. Three (NSW, Victoria, and ACT) use the (now old) Commonwealth ERI categories. WA uses a much-modified version of this, collapsing it down to 6 categories. Tasmania, NT, SA, and Queensland have flat rates. This makes direct comparison more difficult. However, the WA grants are generally at the more generous end for any given category, in some cases quite markedly so. They are also less "needs based" than those based directly on the ERI . This means that the wealthier schools in WA do very well indeed compared with some other states. Some examples are shown in the table below.(For a full list see Table 28 in NRS, 1998 )

(Note: All states and territories are looking at how to fund non government schools as the ERI disappears and this is an issue for all parties in WA which could be taken up in the election context).

The proportion of funds going to non government schools in WA has increased extremely rapidly over the last few years as shown in the following table 5.

	Government Schools $m	Non Government Schools $m	Ratio NGS:GS
1994/95	1005.720	239.215	0.24
1995/96	1019.777	253.366	0.25
1996/97	1066.902	377.305	0.35
1997/98	1072.517	439.439	0.41
1998/99	1101.107	486.07	0.44
Increase	9.48%	103.19%

(Figures are unadjusted and include Commonwealth expenditure. Based on CGC figures at Table 4-51 and 4-52 pp196-197, Vol II, 2000).

• Between 1994/95 and 1998/99 the increase in non government school funding was over 100%, whilst increase in enrolments was less than 14%.

• In 1994/95 non government schools received 24 cents for every dollar spent on government schools, by 1998/99 this had increased to 44 cents.

This bias to non government schools is far more exaggerated in WA than in other states and territories. Table 6 shows the per cent increases/decreases for all states and territories for the period 1993/94 to 1998/99,using figures adjusted to 1998/99 prices.

(Based on CGC figures at Table 4-51 and 4-52 pp 196-197, Vol II, 2000)

This is shown in graph form in Graph 1.

Over the period 1993/94 to 1998/99 funding for :

• Government schools in WA decreased nearly 8% compared with a national average of less than –5%.

• Non government schools in WA increased nearly 70% compared to a national average of 23.5%.

Therefore it is clear that the Court Government is extremely biased to non government schools.

Table 7 summarises the proportion of expenditure on the various sectors compared to total expenditure.

Between 1994/95 and 1998/99, as a proportion of total expenditure, expenditure on:

• Education as a whole fell from 25.27% to 24.82%;
• Pre-schools fell from 0.61% to 0.48%
• Government Schools fell from 16.71% to 13.99%
• VET rose from 3.21% to 3.5%
• Non Government Schools rose from 3.98% to 6.18%, by far the biggest increase!

The NRS used to report Income and Expenditure per student for non-government schools. The last edition (1998) did not do this. Therefore Table 8 is from 1997. By way of comparison, in the financial year 1997/98 per student expenditure in WA government schools (including capital) was $5726.

(From NRS, Table 2D 1997)

Recurrent expenditure per student from 1995-1997 is shown in the table 9 below. Note that there are minor differences in the way Government and Non government schools are calculated which mean they are not exactly comparable. However, they are very similar and the trend is worth looking at. (Non Government schools includes private income from fees, etc).

Since then, state grants to private schools have increased at a greater rate than government schools, as noted above, and under the new States Grants Legislation, Commonwealth grants are also generally increasing. The lower growth rate in Independent schools shown here was one of the rationalisations used by the Howard government for the increases to wealthy schools. The fact is they did not receive increases above inflation because, as can be seen, they were already operating above government school resource levels. There is therefore every reason to believe that many non government schools are now operating above government school resource levels.

Table 10 summarises students, staff and school numbers in WA government schools 1993 – 1998:

(from Report on Government Services, Table 2A.53, p147)

Table 11 shows the number of full-time students by category of school in WA, and the per cent attending government schools.

This table 12 shows the number of government and non government schools.

Source: ABS Schools Various years.

Retention rates around Australia have declined since 1992, and WA follows this pattern. WA tends to be around the Australian average in terms of retention rates, both for all schools and for Government Schools, as shown in the following tables. However, in government schools WA was above the average and has dropped closer to the average, as shown in the following two tables 13 and 14

(From NSR, 1998, Table 11)

(ABS 4221.0)Apparent Retention to Year 12).

Figures for 1999 show a slight improvement but similar trends.

(ABS 4221.0 Apparent Retention to Year 12)

(Source: ABS 4221.0, various years)

Capital expenditure per student is shown in the following table 17:

According to the CGC, WA has the highest revenue raising capacity and a comparatively low revenue raising effort, (Table 5-1). It has a relatively high cost of providing services, including in education (5-2), but collects less revenue than it could. Overall then it is a low taxing state, which has the capacity and need to provide much better services. Nevertheless, provision is above all except SA. In other words WA looks good on figures which compare direct dollar amounts, but less well when consideration is taken of the demographic and similar needs based factors

The CGC (1999 Report, V2, and fig. 5-1 and 5-2) shows that in both schools and TAFE, WA spends less than the CGC calculates it "should".

The prognosis for how WA will fare under the GST is considerably different depending on whether one is reading the Treasury forecast or the Access Economics analysis. The former puts WA as being better off by 2004/5, whilst the latter does not believe it will be better off in its seven year forecast period!

However, since those reports there are a number of indications that GST revenue in all states and territories is well above predictions.

There is already a budget surplus.

It is therefore reasonable to assume that total revenue will expand over the coming years and all parties should be prepared to use this to meet the needs of education and particularly government schools, rather than, for instance, reducing business taxes.

The WA Government should be taken to task for its failure to stand up for government schools in the recent States Grants Legislation debate. Its submission, which was very thin, did not complain about the EBA, which between 1997 and 2000 took $6.73 m from the money WA was entitled to.

Budget Estimates

Budget estimates are as they say just estimates and assume no policy changes other than those announced as part of the budget. Therefore one should be cautious about reading too much into them. WA budget papers, like most others, are not particularly revealing and offer limited information especially about the breakdown between sectors and allocations to particular programs. This has been made worse by a move to accrual accounting. The Summary for Education is at page 395 of Vol 1 in the Budget papers.

Expenditure on non government schools is even harder to identify in the budget papers. It appears to be included under Education Services (see p.421), but it is far from clear what is and is not State expenditure on non government schools. In the long term this requires further exploration. Some figures, which seem to include large elements of non government school expenditure, are included in the table below under "Education Services". They are subject to considerably larger increases over the period than those in government schools. Note that in the last budget there were two new measures for non government schools. The first was a "financial assistance package to help low enrolment schools implement the change to entry age" (p.420), worth$1.2 m in a full year, and which is apparently ongoing for a number of years. The second was an increase in interest subsidy at a cost of $912 000 in a full year, also apparently ongoing. This was in response to very high "demand for low interest loan funds from non government schools planning to undertake capital developments."

The annual report contains more up to date information than most of the national sources used above and some detail not available elsewhere. Unfortunately, however, this is only in relation to government schools. "Education services" are not included. It would be worth inquiring if there is a separate report for this. Much of the data also includes pre-schools, which means it cannot be compared to the other data. (A separate trend series based on Annual Report data may be worth considering.)

The table below contains some selected figures, from the latest (1999/2000) report, which may be useful to update some of the tables above in an indicative way. (However, there are sometimes differences in the way figures are calculated for state and national reporting purposes.)

In general, many WA statistics, which look at raw expenditure, do not compare unfavourably with other states and territories, and there are limited opportunities for running straight comparative figures.

However, when consideration is made of the needs of WA, as in CGC calculations, WA is not spending according to its needs. WA is relatively well off and has greater capacity to raise revenue than its is using. It has needs caused by its particular circumstances, which also are not being met. The CGC data supports an argument that the state can afford increased expenditure on education, and using the (Federal) Treasury GST forecasts from 2004/5 there will be "extra" revenue even without raising any taxes, which could be channelled into public services, not least public education.

There are therefore some areas in which the government could be highlighted for poor performance, such as:

• falling retention rates
• above average student/teacher ratios
• declining proportion of total expenditure on education, especially on government schools
• comparatively low expenditure on primary schools
• and especially the bias towards private schools, (which would slot in well with the national campaign. I would suggest that this be correlated with amount and increases going to non government schools in particular electorates.

ABS schools (various years). (ABS 4221.0)

Commonwealth Grants Commission, (1999 and 2000), General Grant Relativities, Canberra. (CGC)

Education Department of Western Australia Annual Report, 1999-2000, Perth.

Government of Western Australia, 2000, Budget Papers, Perth.

National Report on Schooling Australia, (various years), Curriculum Corporation for MCEETYA, Melbourne. (NRS)

Steering Committee for the Review of Commonwealth/State Service Provision, (20000), Report on Government Services, Productivity Commission, Melbourne. (Productivity Commission)

Note: There was a publication called ABS Expenditure on Education, which has not been produced since 1998, although it may be revived. It produced separate data for state and Commonwealth expenditure by state and territory. However, it did not separate government and non government schools. It has not been used, as the Productivity Commission report covers the same useful ground.