That ICPA (Aust) advocates to the Federal Government to increase the Assistance for Isolated Children (AIC) Basic Boarding Allowance to counteract the increase in costs of educating geographically isolated children at non-government boarding schools due to costs incurred by the Direct Measure of Income (DMI) funding model.
Where schools have been impacted by the DMI funding and there is no other choice other than to increase fees, the costs of educating a Geographically Isolated child dramatically increases and for many rural families will become unaffordable. The DMI funding model only takes tuition fees of students attending the day school into account whereas for Rural & Remote families there is the added cost of boarding fees plus the often-overlooked associated costs of boarding school that includes travel, overnight accommodation due to living remotely, co-curricular activities, medical costs, siblings’ education costs or distance education costs. Essentially, we already pay more, in order to access an equitable education.
An increase in the AIC to assist with the affordability of education for rural and remote families is necessary to ensure that equitable education is available at regional boarding schools for those children who cannot access secondary education in their area. An increase in the AIC needs to be made available to limit the negative impacts, namely the ever-increasing financial gap that rural families are already facing that will be further exacerbated by possible increases in fees due to the DMI funding model. This financial burden is not limited to the financial cost but more importantly the burden of limiting the education options and opportunities for geographically isolated children. Rural families do not deserve to be blindsided by further increased costs and have their children’s education options disadvantaged further.
