When already secure institutions are strengthened further through public subsidy, tax concessions and organised philanthropy, those facing the greatest complexity operate with fewer avenues for support, writes John Frew.
DRIVE THROUGH ALMOST any major Australian city and the presence of its most established private schools is unmistakable. They occupy substantial land, often in locations that have grown increasingly valuable over time. Their buildings reflect decades of expansion: new wings, specialist facilities, performance spaces and carefully maintained grounds. Names of benefactors mark a continuity of support across generations.
These are not fragile institutions. They are stable, confident and highly effective. Demand is strong, outcomes are consistently high, and their communities are deeply invested in their success. They are also, in many cases, charities.
This sits comfortably within the existing legal framework. These schools qualify for tax concessions, attract tax-deductible donations and receive public funding. Each element can be justified on its own terms. Considered together, however, they introduce a quiet tension.
Charity implies support directed towards need, a mechanism through which advantage is redistributed. That meaning does not sit easily alongside organisations that are visibly well-resourced and operating in a competitive educational marketplace. The issue is not performance. It is structured.
On what basis does an institution with substantial accumulated resources continue to qualify for concessions designed to support public benefit?
These questions become clearer when the mechanisms that sustain these institutions are considered together. Public funding, the Schooling Resource Standard (SRS), provides a stable base. Philanthropy builds upon that base, often substantially and over long periods. Tax concessions amplify these contributions. Over time, this produces institutions that are not only effective but increasingly well-resourced, with expanding facilities and growing flexibility.
None of this requires coordination. It is the natural outcome of aligned incentives. What emerges is cumulative advantage: each layer builds upon the others, gradually widening the distance between institutions that benefit from this alignment and those that do not. The shift is rarely dramatic, but over time it becomes unmistakable.
Public schools educate the majority of Australian students and carry the broadest social mandate, enrolling young people across the full range of backgrounds, abilities and needs. In many communities, they function as central civic spaces where social and economic pressures are most directly encountered. Their work is complex, and increasingly so.
In areas of disadvantage, schools contend with the layered effects of poverty, instability and trauma. Behavioural complexity is a daily reality shaping classrooms, staff workload and student experience, while expectations continue to expand across academic performance, wellbeing, inclusion and community engagement.
Funding, while substantial in aggregate, is tightly structured and often absorbed by these demands. Public schools remain below full funding, operating at around 90 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard — leaving limited capacity to accumulate resources beyond immediate needs. Facilities are maintained but rarely transformed at the pace seen elsewhere, and staffing flexibility is constrained. The system is designed to deliver broadly, not to build advantage.
Within this context, the distribution of additional support becomes difficult to reconcile. Public schools have limited access to philanthropic networks and do not attract large-scale tax-deductible donations in any consistent way. Their capacity to generate independent revenue is constrained both structurally and ethically. At the same time, federal funding continues to flow across both systems. It is often argued that responsibility for public schools rests primarily with the states. There is truth in this. But if the Commonwealth participates in school funding, then how that funding is distributed becomes central.
When public resources, tax concessions and private contributions combine to strengthen institutions already well-positioned, while those serving the most complex needs operate with fewer avenues for supplementation, an asymmetry emerges. This asymmetry is not the result of a single decision, but the cumulative effect of many decisions moving in the same direction.
Philanthropy reflects a similar pattern. Giving is increasingly mediated through structured systems, foundations, development offices and fundraising bodies that align contributions with institutional priorities. Resources tend to flow towards organisations with the capacity to attract and manage them effectively: those with established networks, recognised brands and the infrastructure to sustain donor engagement.
In this environment, advantage compounds. Less-resourced schools rarely have access to this infrastructure, their focus remaining on immediate demands. Generosity has not diminished; it has been organised, and in being organised, it has become part of the same system that shapes advantage.
A further dimension lies in the formation of those who shape policy. Across Australian parliaments, a disproportionate number of elected representatives have been educated in fee-paying schools. This is not universal, but it is consistent enough to matter. Policy is shaped within networks where shared assumptions carry influence, and many of these schools explicitly aim to develop leadership within stable, well-resourced environments.
The consequence is not intent, but perspective. When policymakers are formed within stable systems, those conditions become the implicit reference point. This extends into the public service, where policy is designed around coherence, predictability and measurable outcomes. In education, this produces a model of how schools are expected to function when they are “working well.”
For many public schools, particularly those in disadvantaged communities, this creates tension. The conditions shaping behaviour and learning are often unstable and unpredictable. When policy assumes stability that does not exist, its relevance diminishes. Expectations cannot be consistently met, measures of success reflect absent conditions, and interventions are designed for systems that operate differently. The gap between policy and practice widens.
This is not neglect. It is misrecognition. Systems interpret new conditions through familiar frameworks, simplifying complexity to make it manageable. The consequences are felt most clearly in classrooms, where teachers work within frameworks that assume stability while responding to environments that are anything but. Behavioural complexity and uneven readiness for learning are part of daily reality, and bridging this gap becomes an ongoing task without sufficient resources.
This occurs within a system still operating below its own identified standard. Over time, structural strain emerges. Support services are stretched, specialist expertise is limited, and time, the most critical resource, is compressed. What emerges is not failure, but a system in which recognition and resourcing are only partially aligned.
The outcome is continuity. Institutions that begin with strength become stronger, while those operating under more complex conditions continue within tighter constraints. This pattern is reproduced through the interaction of funding, philanthropy, policy and perception. Change, therefore, requires more than adjustment. It requires recognition, an ability to see clearly the conditions that are not currently well understood and to respond to them on their own terms.
This returns the argument to its starting point. The question is not whether successful schools should succeed, nor whether generosity should be encouraged. It is whether the structures through which support is delivered still reflect their intended purpose. When institutions already secure are strengthened further through public subsidy, tax concessions and organised philanthropy, while those facing the greatest complexity operate with fewer avenues for support, the meaning of that support shifts.
It becomes less about addressing need and more about sustaining advantage.
And the question that remains is a quiet one: not whether the system works, but who it is ultimately working for.
John Frew has worked in education for almost 50 years, including as foundation principal at a secondary school for students with conduct disorder and oppositional disturbance.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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