My Christian School, a newsletter from Christian Schools Australia, makes the claim “public school enrolments are on the decline.” in an email dated 5 November.
They provide two links to back this claim
• A Herald Sun Story that “Low fee Christian School enrolments are soaring” that includes this stat: “private Christian colleges are growing up to six times faster than government schools… Private non Catholic schools now educate 745,000 students or 18 per cent of the national school population.”
• A story from the Age: Queensland public schools “shrank by 1005 students overall from 2021 to 2024″ as Brisbane’s population grew by 9% to hit 1.36 million.”
It is clear that low-fee private schools are doing well.
In fact, the national figures back up the Christian School Australia claim. ACARA (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority reports that “Over the past 10 years: The number of students in independent schools rose from 529,857 in 2014 to 692,271 in 2024 – a 30.7% increase. This has resulted in a 2.5 percentage point increase in the proportion of students attending [non catholic] independent schools.
“Total enrolments grew by 437,905 (11.9%), largely reflecting the growth in the school-age population.”
It is fair to attribute much of the growth in independent schools outside the Catholic sector to low-fee schools.
So have government school enrolments declined? Yes they have.
Here are the ACARA stats for student numbers.
Year Gov Schools Independent
2015 2,445,130 540,304
2016 2,483,802 547,374
2017 2,524,865 557,490
2018 2,558,169 569,930
2019 2,595,830 584,262
2020 2,629,143 599,226
2021 2,622,755 620,781
2022 2,605,826 641,318
2023 2,614,094 666,281
2024 2,619,513 692,271
The Catholic sector has increased from 765,539 to 820,222 in the same period.
The growth of Islamic schools has been significant. ACARA does not break out figures. The Association of Independent Schools records 236,913 students in their schools, with 21,442 in Islamic schools. A 2022 Sydney Morning Herald story reports “Figures from The Association of Independent Schools of NSW show Islamic school enrolments account for 9 per cent of independent school students — up from 5.4 per cent in 2011.”