That ICPA (Aust) advocates to the Federal Government to urgently address the negative impacts that the Direct Measure of Income (DMI) Funding model is having on geographically isolated children who are enrolled at non-government schools and reside within boarding school facilities.
In 2020, the Australian Government introduced the direct measure of income (DMI) to determine the capacity of a school community to contribute financially to the operational costs of their school.
The DMI calculates capacity to contribute (CTC) using the median income of the parents and guardians of the students attending the school, making use of income tax data and other information held by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) through the Multi-Agency Data Integration Project (MADIP).
SOURCE: https://www.education.gov.au/recurrent-funding-schools/resources/direct-measure-income-dmi-methodology
The DMI Methodology states that the new DMI funding is intended to ensure more funding flows through to those schools that need it the most, however, there are a number of factors that don’t make it an accurate, reliable or an equitable funding model, especially for rural and remote families who rely upon the boarding schools attached to many of the schools in regional areas for the education of their children for secondary schooling.
Since its introduction in 2020, ICPA (Aust) and the Coalition of Regional Independent Schools (CRISA) have lobbied the Federal Government to the fundamental shortcomings and possible flow on effect that the DMI funding model could impose, possible consequences of these effects and how it could stand to affect the education of rural and remote children and financially impact regional outer metropolitan schools across Australia.
As per a letter circulated to families during July 2022, by a P-12 school in regional QLD, it has been reported that federal funding accounts for approximately 45% of that particular school’s total income; so, in turn, this significant reduction in federal funding has major effects upon the financial position of the school. To counteract this loss, the school has had to develop various strategies to deal with the decline in funding due to the DMI funding scheme. The school projects that the federal funding will fall significantly over the years of 2022-2029. Historically, this school had been able to keep tuition fee rises to a reasonable level due to the fact that federal funding increased by an average of 6.6% per annum over the last four years. However, moving forward under the new funding model any reduction in federal funding can only be replaced by increased tuition fees or by increasing student numbers. To date this school has chosen to increase student numbers over a period of 7 years.
Increasing enrolments - Schools that take this approach could inadvertently place pressure on existing facilities if they are not well positioned to deal with the increased enrolments across both day school and boarding, class sizes would be affected and recruiting extra teaching staff in the current teacher shortage environment could prove difficult.
Increasing Fees - A regional school budget model indicates that if the reduction of funding was to be offset entirely by fee increase this would have to be at a minimum level of 7% per annum for the years 2023 to 2029 – a position that would make education unaffordable for many regional, rural and remote families.
ICPA (Aust) members have reported that their tuition and boarding out of pocket expenses range from $10,000 to $30,000 per child per year depending on allowances and scholarships. The cost of boarding is already increasing at an alarming rate and certainly in advance of CPI, so, increased fees caused by the apparent oversight of the effects that this model would have on Geographically Isolated families just exacerbates the financial burden. Safeguards need to be put into place to ensure rural and remote students who attend boarding schools are able to continue their education without the additional burden and cost caused by the loss of such large amounts of funding due to increased fees or worse still, the forced closure of some boarding facilities due to being deemed financially unviable. In the event that increased fees create a fallout from independent schools to government schools it would impact heavily on education expenditure for state governments.
Geographically Isolated students who need to board have fewer choices with regards to the school they attend; they are limited to those schools that have boarding facilities. Rural and Remote families rely heavily on and are the end users of these schools and associated boarding facilities. We are beginning to see and feel the negative impacts that this funding model is placing on the operating budgets of schools and more importantly our children.
Concerns have been raised by parents that the new school funding arrangement is significantly impacting students who board within the boarding facilities attached to negatively impacted regional schools. In Queensland, where the ‘Boarding Standard for Australian Schools and Residences’ is not mandated, it is concerning that boarding facilities could fall below the ‘Standard’ and boarding students’ welfare be negatively impacted as schools address how to continue to operate in the short term due to the loss of income. It is particularly concerning that the loss of federal funding has coincided with an unprecedented rise in costs of living. The running costs of the boarding arm of these schools have no doubt been scrutinised and reports of boarding budgets being scaled back. Rising food costs are a major cost for 7 2023 Federal Conference Agenda Motions www.icpa.com.au boarding schools, when costs are rising and budgets are being scaled back the nutritional quality, quantity and variety of meals provided to boarders are negatively affected. It could be argued that food budgets should in fact need to be increased due to the cost of food, but with many schools engaging with external food service providers and repeated attempts to work with the schools to improve the situation, nothing changes as it all comes down to profit margins. Boarding Schools should be required to at least meet the age-appropriate Australian Dietary guidelines to provide nutrients and energy needs for all adolescents.
https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/australian-dietary-guidelines.pdf
It is imperative that the DMI funding does not affect the health and wellbeing of Geographically Isolated Children whilst attending boarding schools at the cost of schools doing business. Boarding budgets need to be safeguarded and be transparently reported as part of school reporting to ensure that boarding students are guaranteed equitable outcomes by means of academic support & tutoring, reside in safe well-maintained facilities, be supported and supervised by appropriately trained staff at the correct ratio and be provided with a variety of highly nutritional meals to support their adolescent needs to engage in their academics and sporting activities whilst attending boarding school.
