Julia Gillard has failed in her commitments to ensure that full transparency on expenditure in schools would be central to information provided to community through the MySchoolWebsite. 

The updated version of My School will include for the first time information on both school income and capital expenditure.

In comparing funding people should take into account school size and location and the needs of the students (reflected in a limited way by the school ICSEA score).

In looking at the income of government schools, people need to keep in mind that the unique requirements of the public sector to operate a school in every community that is open to all students create significant diseconomies of scale which drive up the costs. Small country schools and those in remote areas, for example, will be operating on much higher income levels per student than those in metropolitan areas. Public schools also educate the vast majority of students with high educational needs who are more expensive to educate. The vast majority of low income (77%), Indigenous (86%), disability (80%), provincial (72%) and remote area (84%) students attend government schools.

The recent release of financial data has only seen government schools required to table all expenditure across the system ... hence the distribution of system costs into schools and the appearance to school communities that finances accessible directly to schools is greater.

Just so you know non-government schools are not required to include –

• profit and loss on recurrent spending;
• value of assets;
• investment portfolios;
• donations and bequest;
• money in bank accounts;
• trusts or foundations.

See attached a more detailed summary of the financial information on My School.