Greens to call for inquiry into public funding of Exclusive Brethren schools
The Greens will request the auditor general conduct an inquiry into the flow of public funds to the private school network set up by the secretive Exclusive Brethren sect.
Following a Guardian Australia investigation into OneSchool Global, which has received more than $130m in taxpayer funds over five years, the NSW Greens senator David Shoebridge said an independent inquiry was needed.
Advocacy group Save Our Schools also backed the need for a government inquiry into the schools’ funding arrangements.
Related: Years at Exclusive Brethren school were ‘darkest moments of my life’, former student says
Shoebridge, the Greens’ justice spokesperson, said there was also a role for both the Australian Tax Office and the charities commissioner to investigate reports that the schools had awarded lucrative building contracts to members of the Exclusive Brethren, which is also known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian church.
The OneSchool Global schools are registered charities in Australia and exempt from income tax. They also have building funds endorsed for deductible gift recipient status.
“Whenever public funds are at play, including where donations are supported by tax deductions, there must be transparency and accountability,” Shoebridge said.
However, he said that while the two agencies had a role, “history shows they have limited powers and tend to operate in secrecy which means we cannot wholly rely on them to deliver accountability”.
“We will be seeking for the auditor general to undertake a ‘follow the money’ investigation into this matter,” he said.
In 2011, parliament passed legislation to give the auditor general additional powers to examine the flow of federal funds, addressing concerns about the ability for the government to examine how many grants were spent.
Independent MP Rob Oakeshott, who introduced the bill, described the legislation as being needed to give the auditor general power to “follow the money trail”.
Under the changes, the auditor general can conduct performance audits of entities in receipt of federal funds to assess whether the funds are “achieving the Commonwealth purpose” linked to the funding. The audits do not suggest any corruption or wrongdoing.
Shoebridge said questions around the funding of the Brethren schools highlighted the importance of such powers.
A spokesperson for the schools said they were fully compliant with the governance standards for charitable entities and “meet the requirements of a raft of other legislation governing national and state entities”.
Many other religious and private schools use similar arrangements to direct donations to school facilities, with a Productivity Commission report recommending tax-deductible status be removed from school building funds. The government has said it will not support the proposal.
The companies in receipt of school building contracts named in previous reporting all told Guardian Australia that while they could not comment on specific contracts or donations due to commercial confidence they were compliant with Australian laws and always abided by procurement processes. The Guardian makes no suggestion of wrongdoing by those companies or any other party in relation to the award of the contracts or otherwise.
The Greens’ education spokesperson, Penny Allman-Payne, also questioned the amount of public funding flowing to the private school system, saying there was not enough scrutiny.
“It’s unacceptable that governments continue to subsidise wealthy and secretive private schools while 98% of public schools in Australia have to operate on less than the bare minimum of funding,” Allman-Payne said.
“[Private] schools operate by a different set of rules to the public system and come under almost no scrutiny about how they use the billions they bank in government funding every year.”
She also called for the government to explain how OneSchool Global in NSW received as much as $31,000 a student – for the Condobolin campus – in combined government funding in 2022.
“That’s almost twice as much funding the regional public school I last taught at received in the same year. And that doesn’t include the additional $11,000 per student [OneSchool Global] earned in fees and other income.
“The government needs to explain how OneSchool Global is able to attract such massive levels of funding.”
Private schools in Australia are funded 80% by the commonwealth and 20% by state governments, paid according to a base amount per student and additional amounts according to size and location. The characteristics of the student population are also factored in, including the level of socio-educational advantage which is based on enrolment information provided by the schools to the education department.
Related: Why Guardian Australia is investigating Exclusive Brethren schools
Trevor Cobbold, the national convener of school advocacy group Save Our Schools, said there needed to be “a full government inquiry into the legitimacy of federal funding of the school”.
The Guardian has reported that the schools have received almost $30m in commonwealth payments for educational “disadvantage” over five years despite many being among the country’s wealthiest schools.
“The available figures strongly suggest that OneSchool Global NSW is being funded at a much higher level than is warranted,” Cobbold said.
He said it appeared “incompatible” that 93% of the school’s students in NSW could be in the bottom two quartiles of the index of Socio-Education Advantage (SEA) while having a median-adjusted taxable family income of $302,000.
Cobbold pointed to a number of other NSW private schools with a similar family income that have a low proportion of students in the bottom two SEA quartiles and high proportions in the top quartiles.
“The contradiction between the median family income of OneSchool Global NSW and its proportion of students in the bottom two SEA quartiles together with the contradiction between its student composition and funding compared to other schools with a similar median family income demands a government inquiry.
“It is incumbent on the federal government to ensure the integrity of taxpayer funding of private schools,” he said.
Cobbold said there were “fundamental issues about how private schools are registered and qualify for federal funding” that needed to be looked at.
A spokesperson for OneSchool Global said the schools adhered to the requirements of government and “work within those processes to make sure our students receive their share of funding for their education”.
“The government sets the funding model for students, and therefore we are not in a position to answer questions about why students qualify and how much they qualify for,” they said.
Do you know more? Email sarah.martin@theguardian.com
