Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697630874148.pdf (Australia)
SUBMISSION To SELECT COMMITTEE on SCHOOL FUNDING I wish to express my deeply-held concern about the way the Australian Education Act 2013 grossly discriminates against distance education students in the non-government sector.

Section 33 of the Act restricts the base funding amount for non-government distance education (NGDE) students to a mere 35% of what is available to all other Australian school students.

This 35% funding cap applies only to distance education students in non-government schools.
The latest My School Website figures show that distance education students in government schools in Western Australia are allocated more than 7 times the funding that my NGDE children are allocated.

There is no educational or socioeconomic rationale for such a deprivation of funding by the Commonwealth.

This legislated policy of underfunding NGDE students effectively deprives them of appropriate numbers of teachers and educational resources.
Such inequality should be of major concern to members of the Select Committee, whose Terms of Reference include examining “how funding arrangements will meet the needs of all schools and individual students, including Indigenous students, students with disability, small schools, remote schools, students with limited English, and students from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds” (Terms of Reference b; italics added).

I therefore ask the Select Committee to request the Minister, the Hon.
Christopher Pyne to remove the references to NGDE, which allocate such low funding to our children.

Thank-you for your urgent consideration of this matter.

Yours faithfully, Louise Brown Senate Select Committee on School FundingSubmission 444