Study into the Resourcing of Australian Primary Schools (SRAPS)

Follow-Up to SRAPS - 2008

At the national APPA Conference in Sydney in October 2008, Professor Max Angus delivered his paper "Investing in Australian Primary Education: The Challenges Ahead", calling for a new narrative for Australian primary schooling to support APPA's call for increased funding for primary education to achieve the improved results that the Australian Government is seeking.

Click here to download the paper by Professor Angus (427Kb PDF file).

APPA has released the following press release - click here to download the release (56Kb PDF file).

Australia spends less of its GDP on primary education than most OECD countries.

Australia spends less of its GDP on primary education than most OECD countries and, according to the latest OECD figures, is ranked only 20th out of 28 countries, keynote speaker, Professor Max Angus of Edith Cowan University, has told the annual conference of Australian Primary Principals Association in Sydney. Professor Angus said that the low level of funding for primary in Australia was the product of 19th century thinking. People thought that teaching a Year 11 student chemistry was a much more demanding task than teaching a 6-year-old to read,” Professor Angus said. “Hence they accepted the extra costs of matriculation studies that arose mainly from smaller class sizes.”

He said, however, that there were signs of a shift in thinking with interest in the performance of students on national and international student assessment results focusing attention on the widening gap between high and low achievers in literacy and numeracy performance during the primary years. “It is ironic that the middle primary years are the lowest funded of any years of schooling and yet it is during this phase of their schooling that significant numbers of students fall behind”, he said.

"Two things needed to happen to turn around this trend," he told the delegates.

“Firstly, additional funding needs to be more accurately targeted to the schools with largest concentrations of students at risk than occurs at present. The support acquired with the additional funds must also be targeted at those students who are battling to make progress. This is much harder to do than it sounds because it is easier to spread resources across whole classes or the whole school.

"Secondly, the extra support needs to be sustained until the student has begun to catch up. We currently have a make or break system”, Professor Angus said. “Extra help is typically concentrated in the first year or two of schooling. If students are unable to master the foundational skills for literacy and numeracy in the early years, the problem is handed on to the classroom teacher in Year 3 or 4 without adequate extra support. It becomes increasingly harder to help these students as they progress through school.”

Professor Angus quoted Finland, the country that tops the PISA assessments, where nearly a quarter of all primary students receive additional support. “More than a third of students in regular classrooms receive extra support with their learning difficulties in their first year and this gradually tapers to about 16 percent by the end of primary school,” he said.

"While extra funding would be welcomed by school principals, there is no doubt it would raise expectations that the national and international assessment results will improve. It may also lead to a rethinking about how best to organise primary education.

"While such a funding policy would be in the best interest of primary students it will not make the job of leading a primary school any less challenging,” Professor Angus said.

About SRAPS 1 & 2

The current work on primary resourcing began in 2000 when the Australian Government Primary Principals Association commissioned Professor Max Angus to do a survey of government primary principals regarding resource issues they faced in their schools. This work was published the following year as Our Future (629Kb pdf file).

The view of nearly 2,500 principals who responded was bleak. They felt that they were not able to meet the expectations placed on them.

As this was a subjective view, DEST agreed to fund a more systematic investigation into the question of primary resourcing. This was done in two parts: SRAPS 1 & SRAPS 2.

The purpose of SRAPS 1 was to identify the overall quantum of funding available to primary schools and to look at the historic reasons for the lower level of funding in primary education compared to secondary. The report of this work is published as Resourcing Australian Primary Schools: A Historical Perspective (693Kb pdf file). (plus the Statistical Appendix [251Kb pdf file]).

The purpose of SRAPS 2 was to investigate whether the historic factors creating the disparity in funding were still relevant and to assess the sufficiency of resource levels in primary education. This work has been published as The Sufficiency of Resources for Australian Primary Schools (496Kb pdf file).
The findings of SRAPS 1 & 2 were that primary schools continued to be funded at lower levels than secondary schools although the disparity had diminished over the twentieth century. While, staff in one school reported they had sufficient resources to meet the National Goals of Schooling in the Twenty-First Century, the other 29 schools studied reported less favourable circumstances.

About SRAPS 3

Stage 3 of the Study into the Resourcing of Australian Primary Schools was commissioned by the Australian Primary Principals Association during 2005. It was funded by the Federal Department of Education, Science and Training and builds on SRAPS 1 & 2.

The Study was led by Professor Max Angus from Edith Cowan University and Dr John Ainley for the Australian Council of Educational Research. Harriet Olney was the study’s manager.

The purpose of Stage 3 was to validate and extend the findings of Stage 2 with a larger sample of schools. This sample consisted of 160 primary schools from all states and territories and all school sectors. It was a stratified, random sample that is representative of all stand-alone primary schools in Australia.The Study Overview (149Kb pdf file) was published in 2006.

The report from SRAPS 3 was published in 2007 - In The Balance (2.21Mb pdf file) (plus an Executive Summary [1.06Mb pdf file]).

In October-November 2007, APPA issued 5 newsletters called Parent Links, specifically aimed at gaining the support of parents in the campaign for proper resourcing of primary schools