The Catholic Lady Mercy College, down the road from King's, would receive no increase. But the Opposition still refused to speculate on what changes it would try to make to the Government States Grants Bill, which will go before the Senate this month. Labor says it will not act irresponsibly by blocking the Bill, which must be passed by the end of the year for government and non-government school funding to go ahead. Later, Mr Lee challenged the Prime Minister and the Liberal MP for the marginal seat of Parramatta, Mr Ross Cameron, to visit the parents of students at Lady Mercy College and at Parramatta High to tell them why they would receive virtually no extra funding when King's would receive so much. Mr Cameron, in turn, defended the Government's funding system, saying the Government gave the Catholic Church what it asked for and it was happy with it, and that the church's national office was responsible for the allocation of funds to schools such as Lady Mercy.
Kings obviously has students from quite poor areas.
The SES model bases the funding for private schools on the socio-economic situations of the families according to census data. For that reason, schools with a high number of boarders are likely to receive the most extra funding under the system, which will be phased in by 2004. The Education Minister, Dr Kemp, said Kings School did not receive any funding increase for 15 years under Labor and was only being funded at 31 per cent of the cost of educating a child at a government school.