Independent Schools Victoria has blasted an offer from the education minister, Dan Tehan to bring forward independent and Catholic schools’ federal funding if they meet benchmarks to return to face-to-face teaching, accusing him of wedging schools in a dispute with the Victorian government.
After warning independent schools with the stick of withdrawing their funding if they didn’t open their doors, Tehan is now trying the carrot approach by offering them up to 25% of their total annual recurrent funding early, in late May and early June.
In a letter to the Independent Schools Council of Australia and the National Catholic Education Commission, sent on Tuesday, Tehan offered to financially assist schools “in their response to Covid-19 and also [to] encourage the re-engagement of students within a classroom based learning environment”.
To be eligible for the first payment of 12.5% of recurrent funding, non-government school authorities must meet a condition Tehan imposed on 9 April to open campuses for term two and have a plan to fully reopen classroom teaching by 1 June.
To be eligible for the second payment of 12.5%, the school authority will need to commit to achieving 50% of their students attending classroom-based learning by 1 June.
School systems will have until 1 May to apply, with payments set to be made to state and territory treasuries on 21 May and 9 June.
Non-government schools have complained that falling enrolments and the fact federal funding is based on a census date of students in August means they are set to lose both fee income and government funding.
On Wednesday, the Independent Schools Council of Australia welcomed the offer, which its chief executive, David Mulford, said was “not a handout” but “simply a matter of adjusting the timing of one of the regular scheduled payments” to help improve cash flow issues.
Mulford said independent schools “remain supportive of the government’s intention to reopen schools in a timely manner”.
But Independent Schools Victoria chief executive, Michelle Green, said the offer put schools in an “extraordinarily difficult and unfair position” because they had “just two days to decide if they are able to provide a safe workplace for their teachers and a safe learning environment for their students”.
“Independent schools are being used as a wedge in a policy disagreement between the federal and Victorian governments,” she said. “This is unfair and entirely inappropriate when what’s at stake is the health of children and their teachers.”
Tehan has been publicly lobbying for all schools to return to face-to-face teaching in term two, resisted by teachers’ unions, which want more physical distancing measures in school, and Victoria, which cites its own medical advice in favour of remote learning.
Since the national cabinet recognised states’ autonomy rather than a nationally consistent approach, parents have continued to be confused by a patchwork of different approaches on school closures and remote learning.
New South Wales is set to return to face-to-face teaching in week three of term two, from 11 May. Queensland will deliver education remotely until 22 May, with a re-evaluation to take place by 15 May.
On 9 April, Guardian Australia revealed Tehan had told independent school associations he would impose a new condition in effect requiring them to make classroom learning available or risk losing federal funding.
But even that direction acknowledged that schools must follow “the advice of the health or education authorities of the commonwealth or the state or territory in which the school is located”, leading to confusion particularly in Victoria.
On Friday Scott Morrison reiterated that schools do not need to impose physical distancing rules in classrooms – such as maintaining 1.5 metres between students and four square metres of personal space.
The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee advised it believes the “venue density” rules are not “appropriate or practical in classrooms or corridors”. It did advise that schools should impose room density measures in staff rooms “given the greater risk of transmission between adults”.
The AHPPC has noted there is “very limited evidence of transmission between children in the school environment” and just 2.4% of confirmed cases have been in children aged between five and 18 years of age.
