Michael Soulé

Funding for Australian Steiner Schools: Benefits, Challenges and Lessons of Government Support

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 In this essay by the Head of the Steiner Education Assn. in Australia, Tracey Puckeridge discusses the funding structure of Australian Steiner schools and offers an assessment of the benefits, drawbacks and practical realities of the current government funding for Steiner Schools.

 Government funding for Steiner and other independent schools in Australia has been available through a number of avenues since 1964.  Since that time, the federal government has increasingly instigated education reforms, which are tied to funding agreements.  As a result, Australia now has 27 different funding models and a complex maze of regulatory requirements for schools.

For the time being, Steiner schools in Australia enjoy significant benefits from the national approach to educational funding. However, with a political and uncertain funding and regulatory future, they must remain creative and flexible as they face a growing set of challenges in navigating the country’s educational environment.

How the funding model is structured

In Australia there are three categories of schools: government (State or public), Catholic, and non-government (independent schools). Steiner schools fall under the non-government (independent) category. In some states there are also Steiner stream classes in State schools, which are fully funded.

Steiner and other independent schools in Australia receive funds from three main sources: the Commonwealth Government; State or Territory Government; and private income from parents (school fees), benefactors, tax-deductible donations (to building and library funds) and fundraising.

Each State and Territory has a school registration authority responsible for the registration of independent schools. They often apply different levels of scrutiny and compliance across their jurisdictions. Once registered, the school is entitled to both State and Commonwealth funding, with amounts varying according to a range of extremely complex formulae.

In 1964, the first government funding to independent schools was received through capital funding grants. From 1970, recurrent funding occurred on a per student basis. After 1973, these grants were calculated as a percentage of the cost of educating a child in a government school and linked to a four-year cycle under the Commonwealth Act. There have been many additional changes to the Act over the last 40 years, up to the latest iteration adopted in 2012.

There is currently a funding review of the latest model. Steiner Education Australia’s submission can be found at http://steinereducation.edu.au/news/latest/sea-funding-submission-to-senate-select-committee.

What are the benefits of government funding?

Government funding for non-government schools provides choice and diversity of schooling in Australia. Parents can choose from a wide range of religious and philosophically based schools, or those in the public or Catholic sector.

In Australia, teachers are well paid. If independent schools in Australia did not receive government funding, most would close due to the high nature of wages -- approximately 70 to 75% of a school’s total expenditure. Independent schools are also able to access government grants for capital funding for building projects.

Another benefit of government funding is increased professionalism among teaching staff. Every teacher must have full university qualifications, be registered under their state teacher registration institute and be regularly appraised against national professional teaching standards.

The Commonwealth and State governments have also increased funding for many projects to improve literacy and numeracy, support students with disability, improve educational outcomes for indigenous students, empower school leadership, drive school improvement, etc. Many of these funds have been distributed through independent school associations.

With the introduction of an Australian curriculum in 2012, the Commonwealth government created an opportunity for a national Steiner curriculum to be recognised as an alternate curriculum framework. Steiner schools across Australia, therefore, agreed to work together to develop an Australian Steiner Curriculum Framework to ensure the integrity of Steiner’s indications and also meet curriculum outcomes as required by registration. Curriculum development is still in progress and many benefits have already been identified. (For more, visit http://steinereducation.edu.au/curriculum/ )

What are the drawbacks?

Recently, managerial bureaucrats and policy makers in Australia have strongly influenced the educational agenda, emphasizing financial accountability and the goal of producing a multi-skilled and flexible workforce able to “compete in the global economy on knowledge and innovation” (Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians, 2008). However, they have largely ignored international educational research and academic recommendations for policy reform in order to pursue their political/economic/business agenda.

The Commonwealth Government has implemented reforms to increase transparency in a push for public accountability such as the National Assessment Plan of compulsory standardised testing to measure student outcomes and school performance as part of the funding agreement.

Steiner school parents have the option to withdraw their child from these standardised tests but the school is obligated to offer them in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 with more tests on the way and the introduction of online testing in the next few years. The publication of standardised testing as a key measure of school performance on the national MySchool website has evoked much debate from stakeholders both for and against the publication of the data, which has resulted in the comparison of schools and published league tables.

What does this mean for Australian Steiner Schools?

Steiner schools are operating in a highly competitive educational environment. Many non-Steiner schools, for example, characterize their education in similar language as the Steiner schools; holistic, creative, imaginative, excellent music, art and outdoor education programs, balancing head, heart and hands, etc.  Steiner schools must clearly articulate what they stand for, what they promise and then hold up to expectations and constant scrutiny.

Administrative costs have increased to manage the barrage of reforms and to up-skill staff in order to meet increased accountability requirements and new legislation. Many schools have reviewed the role of the College of Teachers and have made changes according to their local needs and context as to how they manage workloads and expectations, while still retaining the core of pedagogical discussion and practice.

A new focus on school governance may also see directors of school boards having to complete accredited courses, so they fully understand their responsibilities. While this would be beneficial, small schools, or schools in regional areas that already find it difficult to find directors for school boards may see this as an added burden.

In Summary

The current government funding model is complex.  Formula for determining funding allocations is inconsistent, and difficult to analyze and understand. As a result, many schools are in a state of uncertainty as to how they can financially manage and plan long term in an increasingly competitive environment with higher accountability.

Tracey Puckeridge

Chief Executive Officer

Steiner Education Australia

www.steinereducation.edu.au

[email protected]

Funding for Australian Steiner Schools: Benefits, Challenges and Lessons of Government Support

 

Michael Soulé

The Free Education Group at Michael Hall School in England : 1977-80

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It was the late 1970’s and a number of us with children at Michael Hall, a well- established Waldorf school in Forest Row, Sussex, had an intense interest in Steiner’s social and economic ideas. We wanted to get away from the fee for service model of set tuitions and began talking to the faculty and council of the school about alternatives, tuition as a percentage of income or different levels of tuition. However, the Bursar, the English equivalent of the Business Manager, was set against any form of financial experimentation. He was even opposed to sending one tuition bill to the seven families who were interested in alternatives. So we began meeting once a month and decided to simply total up our tuition amounts and then to see what each of us could pay. This led us to talk, and to share our financial and life circumstances. One summer the farmer’s wheat crop failed due to hail, another spring a new roof was needed by another family, and a third needed to help an ailing parent. And yet for the first three terms we managed to have a surplus. This happened because when you listened to others you looked at your own priorities and expenditures with new eyes and decided to give more. Was the second car really needed or could we share with another family, what else could we cut or how could we increase income? As each family went through such questions we contributed more than enough money, indeed our surpluses funded a teacher vacation fund for the faculty for two years running. As we learned to pool our resources we also began a simple import business and began exploring other income creating ventures. Eventually we built the group to 30 families, in part through the school sending us their scholarship families. While we attempted to make sure the families were motivated by the same ideals in this we were often not successful and the group eventually stopped its work when we accepted too many families who both needed financial support and did not share our underlying values. Some of lessons learned : 1)     Every way of working with tuitions in unconventional ways takes more time and a deeper connection between people. 2)     Success is dependent on members of a group sharing the same motives and values and not working primarily out of self- interest. 3)     A deeper connection between people, sharing biographies and life circumstances, including finances, enhances generosity and initiative. 4)     Generosity can be contagious. Four faculty members in the school who shared our interests started a shared income community, using one checking account and pooling their resources. 5)     Tuition support groups of the type described can be worked with within a school having a traditional tuition model as long as the school can count on a set amount of income per child. Indeed there is no reason a school cannot work with a variety of tuition approaches at the same time. 6)     Involve the parents in the issue of how to develop alternatives to a set tuition model, indeed it is their task to assure the financial sustainability of the school.

The Free Education Group at Michael Hall School in England : 1977-80         By Christopher Schaefer

Michael Soulé

LeadTogether: The Practice of Collaboration

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At the heart of Waldorf Education is an imagination of a better world through human beings’ conscious collaboration with one another, the natural world and the spirit. Its founder, Rudolf Steiner, looked into the future and saw that, in order to combat an age of growing materialism and self centeredness, a new approach to education was needed – one that took into consideration the spiritual nature of the human being and the cosmos – one that considered the interdependence of the natural world and the spirit.

Now almost one hundred years later, we have made a good start. Waldorf Education is known and practiced in thousands of independent institutions throughout the world – schools connected by a commitment to this imagination.

In all of these schools and early childhood centers worldwide, groups of individuals continue to wrestle with the unique social dynamics of their organizations, trying to understand and incorporate the social impulses embedded in the  first school, as they strive to be practical, sustainable and creative organisms in their communities and cultures.

Throughout his life, Rudolf Steiner did everything he could to offer insights, tools and examples of a conscious working together. From the very beginning, he imagined Waldorf schools as social organisms where individuals would learn how to collaborate and lead together.

Collaboration in a faculty, in a board and in an administration is essential to the long-term success of Waldorf Education. Collaboration between schools and colleagues is equally as essential if we are to develop the kinds of relationships needed to keep our Waldorf schools vital.

This site is an attempt to gather the wisdom that has been gained during the last century and begin a new dialog about our tasks, one that we hope will help support a deepened understanding and practice of how to LeadTogether. -MS