Families in NSW are abandoning public schools in favour of private education, with new figures showing a 10 per cent surge in non-government school enrolments as public school enrolments stagnate.
As well as confirming a deepening drift from the public to private sector, a Productivity Commission report also showed government funding for non-government schools growing at a faster rate than for public schools.
The report, to be released on Friday, includes data up to 2013, the year the Gillard government introduced its Gonski school funding changes.
There were 751,790 students enrolled in NSW public schools in 2013 - only 1 per cent more than in 2004. Over the same period, non-government school enrolments grew from 360,403 to 394, 785 - almost a 10 per cent increase. This figure includes independent and Catholic schools.
The trend has continued over recent years. The NSW public school population grew by 2.5 per cent from 2009 to 2013, while the number of students enrolled in private schools swelled by 6.2 per cent.
The migration away from public schooling has occurred primarily at the high school level.
Between 2009 and 2013 enrolments in non-government high schools grew by 7 per cent, while the public school population remained flat.
Over the same period, enrolments in non-government primary schools rose by 5 per cent, compared to 4 per cent growth in the public sector.
The number of public schools in the state fell from 2181 to 2164 from 2009 to 2013, while the number of NSW non-government schools remained largely unchanged.
At a national level, there was a 3.6 per cent increase in public school enrolments over the past four years, compared with 6.8 per cent in non-government schools.
Total government funding per student for NSW public school students rose by 8 per cent over the past decade, compared with 12 per cent for private schools.
State and federal funding to NSW public schools per student grew from $14,214 in 2004 to $15,405 in 2013 in real terms. Funding for the state's private schools rose from $7826 to $8754 per student in real terms over the same period.
Public schools receive most of their funding from state governments, while Catholic and private schools are more reliant on the federal government.
Trevor Cobbold, a former Productivity Commission economist and the head of the public education advocacy group Save Our Schools, said the increased funding to private schools was "completely unfair" and was putting the country's future economic prosperity at risk.
"At the moment there are huge achievement gaps between low income and high income students – between two and three years learning – which means we have a lower skilled workforce than we could have," he said. "If we don't address the funding disparity, these achievement gaps and the lower skilled workforce are going to continue."
The executive director of the Association of Independent Schools of NSW, Geoff Newcombe, said the growth in private education was "definitely in the lower-fee end of the sector", schools which are often in outer urban growth areas.
"The single biggest growth has been the increase in the number of Islamic schools as well as their enrolments," he said. "There's also been a significant growth in the low fee Anglican schools and the Christian schools."
Dr Helen Proctor, an education researcher from the University of Sydney, said the biggest growth in the independent sector was in the low to moderate fee schools, many of which are situated in south and south-west Sydney.
"That's partly because schools have been established in areas where there weren't any private schools before so it's become more accessible," she said. "And some of those schools are relatively inexpensive too."
She said the reason some parents would make the switch to the private sector at high school and not sooner would partly be about saving money on primary school fees.
"It's probably about cost," she said. "There's often travel involved with sending children to private schools, too, so that might be difficult with the younger ones.
"There's more anxiety about teenagers when it comes to peer groups and behaviour and high school is also closer to the high stakes examinations to get into university or the workforce and there's quite a widespread belief that those things might require investing extra money or a different type of school."
The Productivity Commission report also found the cost of childcare continues to climb, with the weekly cost for long day care rising by 5 per cent from 2013 to 2014.
This comes as the Abbott government consults the childcare sector about a new families package, which it says will address childcare affordability.
The median weekly cost for 50 hours of long day care was $385. Fifty hours of family day care was lower, at $375. However, the costs were up 9.7 per cent on 2013.
The report noted that fees were set by service providers and there was "significant variation" across services and across states, where licensing requirements and award wages could differ.
There were more than 1.1 million children aged 12 or under attending a childcare service that was approved for federal childcare benefit funding in the March quarter of 2014.
Total state and federal funding for early childhood education and care in 2013-14 was up 12.5 per cent from 2012-13 to $7.7 billion.
The number of children attending preschool in the year before they start school jumped from 86 per cent of four-year-olds in 2012 to 91 per cent in 2013.
With Judith Ireland
