The Final Report of the National School Resourcing Board's Independent Review of the Socio-Economic Status Score Methodology has been released. A Media Release Senator the Hon Simon Birmingham, Minister for Education and Training is available here.
The Board’s recommendations are:
- Adopt the following definitions: ‘capacity to contribute’ is a function of the school community’s income and wealth; and ‘school community’ is the parents and guardians of the students at the school.
- That the capacity to contribute for a school be determined based on a direct measure of median income of parents and guardians of the students at the school. School fees are not an appropriate measure of capacity to contribute.
- Consult further with the non-government sectors and experts on the development of, and transition to, a new direct measure of capacity to contribute for implementation from 2020.
- Undertake an annual residential address collection and data matching with income tax data to enable the calculation of a rolling average for a stable direct measure of median parent and guardian income for a school.
- Continue existing arrangements for determining capacity to contribute for 2019, with application of updated 2016 Census data.
The report can be accessed here.
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