Allegations that independent schools are inflating the number of students with a disability in order to get more government funding has been dismissed as "unfair and false".
The Australian Education Union on Tuesday said federal government figures show more than half of the national funding increase for students with a disability will go to Victorian independent schools in 2018.
The huge jump is because Victoria's independent schools are claiming a quarter of their students have a disability, the union added, compared with 17 per cent for public schools, and 13 per cent for Catholic schools.
Disability loadings for Victorian independent schools will increase from $63.7 million in 2017 to $123.3 million in 2018, but it will drop $16 million for Catholic schools, figures obtained by the union show.
That means 55.8 per cent of the total national funding increase for disability education will go to independent schools in Victoria, while public schools in the state will increase by 11 per cent.
"They are concentrating a miserly funding increase among wealthy private schools that are suddenly reporting a big unexplained rise in their claimed numbers of children with a disability," Correna Haythorpe, AEU federal president said in a statement.
"We need an explanation and that may only come with an independent audit of what appears to be a further gold-plating of the private system at the expense of children in public schools."
Independent Schools Victoria rejects the claim, which it says is unfounded, unfair and false.
"Students with disability in independent schools receive less funding from the Australian and Victorian governments than similar students in government and Catholic schools," ISV Chief Executive Michelle Green said.
"Schools reported this data in good faith, with the sole aim of identifying students with disability and to suggest they were doing this to gain a financial advantage is not true."
The disability status of students used to be determined by a medical model, which has been changed to a school-based assessment, resulting in a national increase in cases from 212,000 to 470,000.
Because the small national funding increase is spread across a large number of students, disability funding for public schools is being cut in five states and territories, the union says.
Catholic Education Melbourne says national disability assessments are allowing schools to "game the system" by relying on "teacher judgment" and inconsistent data collection.
Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham said the data being used by the union was based on projections and funding will be based on actual student enrolments.
"Funding for students with disability in Victorian government schools will increase by an estimated 108.2 per cent and by 97 per cent for non-government school students," he said.
