The Australian Education Union has called on the federal government to include an emergency $175 million ''equity package'' in this year's budget, with national literacy and numeracy programs targeting at-risk children due to expire on June 30.
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In its pre-budget submission, the AEU has urged the government to introduce the interim package to prevent $175 million for annual literacy and numeracy programs, targeting the most vulnerable students in 1100 schools, from disappearing.
Seventy per cent of those are public schools, which educate the lion's share of disabled, disadvantaged and low socio-economic status students.
The $540 million National Partnership Payments for literacy and numeracy programs were launched at the 2008-09 budget, with the lofty aim of improving literacy and numeracy results for all students, particularly low-income and Aboriginal children.
The landmark Gonski report on schools funding, delivered to the government last month, found the programs boosted the NAPLAN performances of children in schools taking part by between 5 and 16.4 per cent.
While money for the programs run out on June 30, the current Commonwealth schools funding arrangements do not expire until 2014-15.
The AEU argues that unless interim measures are brought in until then, at-risk children who have benefited from the programs risk sliding backwards.
It says the situation perfectly highlights the need to impose long-term, nationally consistent approaches to education funding, with current arrangements fragile and unstable, and too often bound to election cycles.
Federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said the union's analysis of the 2011-12 budget showed the discontinuing of temporary programs like the literacy and numeracy national partnership would reduce Commonwealth funding for government schools, in real terms, by 6 per cent between 2011-12 and 2014-15.
A spokeswoman for Schools Minister Peter Garrett said the government would not comment on individual budget submissions before the budget.
Meanwhile, the Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday issued a report showing independent schools are rapidly overtaking Catholic schools as the non-government school of choice. Since 2001, the number of students at independent schools has grown by 35 per cent, compared with 12 per cent growth in the Catholic schools sector over the same time. The ABS said that in 2011, there were 9435 Australian schools, including 6705 government schools (71 per cent), 1710 Catholic schools (18 per cent) and 1020 independent schools (11 per cent).
