The Federal Government has announced a plan for multi-billion-dollar funding for private schools under a new parental-income funding model.
Catholic and independent schools would benefit from a $4.6 billion package secured with Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
The new agreement ends a long-running conflict over funding changes announced in the so-called Gonski legislation last year.
The National Catholic Education Commission has welcomed the Government’s plan.
Executive director Ray Collins says the existing socio-economic-status, or SES, methodology for providing funds to different schools was not fair.
"What has happened today is a realisation and an acceptance that the SES methodology was an inferior one and that a more direct measure of capacity to contribute from parents through their personal income tax was a fairer methodology of determining how many funds should go to each school."
Under the proposed changes, the Government would move away from a funding model based on census data to a new model using parental tax data to calculate a school’s wealth.
From 2020, the government would provide $3.2 billion over 10 years to put those changes into effect.
Opposition education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek says the plan means the Government has again failed to notice public schools.
"Today, the Prime Minister has turned his back on the two-and-a-half million children that go to public schools around Australia. He's said to the 5 million parents of those children, 'We don’t care about your kids.' Public schools teach the majority of kids from a poor background. Public schools teach the majority of kids who have a disability, Indigenous children, children in remote locations, all of them. The majority go to public schools. So today’s response that goes some of the way to restoring the billions cut from Catholic and independent schools is totally inadequate."
Greens education spokeswoman Mehreen Faruqi has also sharply criticised the Government’s plan.
She says the deal is just "hush money" for the Catholic and independent schools to stop campaigning against the Government, especially with the Wentworth by-election in sight.
"Billions in extra funding for normal government schools doesn't end the school-funding war. It literally inflames it. We know that public schools desperately need funding, and yet they are going to miss out on this deal. So enough of this. It's time for genuine need-based funding for students."
Ray Collins, with the National Catholic Education Commission, says he disagrees the Wentworth by-election was a target.
"We have been negotiating with the Government since May last year, and, certainly, the position that we've arrived at today was being negotiated with the Government before Prime Minister (Malcolm) Turnbull resigned. So the groundwork for this funding was determined before the need for a by-election in Wentworth was even thought of."
Next year, independent and Catholic schools will receive more than $170 million over the calendar year.
More details will come in December during the mid-year budget review.
India Australian social worker Saksham Katyal says he would have liked government putting more funding towards public schools.
