WHAT WAS CLAIMED
The coalition cut $30 billion from school funding in 2014.
OUR VERDICT
Misleading. There was no decrease in actual school funding, rather a reduction in the rate of the projected increase in funding over the long term.
AAP FACTCHECK - The prime minister is misleadingly claiming the coalition ripped $30 billion from schools in the 2014 budget.
However, the figure refers to a projected shortfall in future funding increases, not actual cuts to existing schools funding.
Specifically, the figure refers to a projected difference in future spending increases, based on the coalition's decision to grow school funding at a slower rate of indexation than Labor originally proposed.
Anthony Albanese has made the claim several times during the 2025 election campaign, including in the televised leaders' debates.
"The last time government changed in Australia, in 2013, in the 2014 budget $30 billion was ripped out of public schools in that budget," he said during the Sky News debate (timestamp one minute 23 seconds).
The prime minister also referred to this as "cuts" during the ABC leaders' debate (22:26).
The claim has been repeated by Education Minister Jason Clare.
The policy from which Labor accuses the coalition of cutting funds is the 2013 National Plan for School Improvement, which sought to fund schools to standards outlined by a 2011 review.
The review, authored by David Gonski, set a so-called "school resourcing standard" outlining the government money needed to fully meet the needs of all school students.
Labor's plan lifted funding over six years to reach 95 per cent of that standard by 2019 - this money was in addition (page 5) to existing spending on schools that was already in the budget.
It proposed a funding split for the additional money that would see the Commonwealth contribute 65 per cent of what was needed by 2019, and states and territories 35 per cent.
State and territories paid for 69 per cent of existing baseline schools funding in 2013 (p30).
Labor's school improvement plan also outlined indexation arrangements that determined how much both the baseline and additional schools funding would increase each year.
Indexation is a mechanism used by the government to automatically increase payments to keep up with inflation.
The Commonwealth agreed to index existing baseline schools funding by 4.7 per cent (p62) per year on the proviso states and territories would index existing funding by three per cent.
The additional funding would also be indexed at 3.6 per cent a year under the plan, though schools already funded to the SRS level would receive as little as three per cent.
In dollar terms, the 2013/14 budget allocated $2.8 billion to additional schools funding over the first four years of the plan (p120), with $9.8 billion expected over six years to 2019/20.
Labor passed the Australian Education Bill 2013 enacting its plan in July of that year, but failed to convince all states and territories to sign up to the program before the September election, which it lost.
Only NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT were signed up to the deal before the election.
The coalition went to the 2013 election promising it would "match Labor dollar-for-dollar over the next four years" on the proposal (p5).
Following the coalition's victory, then-education minister Christopher Pyne announced they were scrapping Labor's proposal, saying they'd implement a different funding model in 2015.
However, the coalition, under then-prime minister Tony Abbott eventually recommitted to funding the four years, which was cemented in the government's first budget in 2014.
When asked for evidence to support the claim, the Labor campaign referred AAP FactCheck to the 2014 budget, specifically page seven of the overview.
While committing to the four years of funding, the budget calls Labor's funding arrangement post-2018 "unsustainable".
It states the coalition will instead adopt "sensible indexation arrangements" in the form of indexation by the Consumer Price Index, with an allowance for changes in enrolments (page 91).
The effect on schools funding in dollar terms from the change in indexation arrangements was modelled by Treasury in 2014/15 using economic forecasts from that budget year.
It estimated the coalition's change would save the budget about $28 billion between 2017/18 and 2024/25 (p2) - the figure Labor claims was a cut in schools funding.
Ian Hardy, associate professor of education at the University of Queensland, said the coalition's action did not so much result in a cut as the support for less additional funding for schools than Labor had promised.
Curtin University education policy expert Matthew Sinclair said it's important to note Labor promised a six-year funding deal with only four years accounted for, and only one-third of the money was budgeted.
"When politicians promise funding without actually budgeting for it, they're offering commitments without financial backing," Dr Sinclair said.
"If their opponents later refuse to deliver these unfunded promises, they can misleadingly accuse them of 'cutting funding', even though the money never existed in any official budget.
"The difference between removing real funding and simply not fulfilling hypothetical promises is important."
Emeritus Professor John Wanna, an expert in political science at the Australian National University, told AAP FactCheck that four-year forward estimates by a government leaving office are "not worth the paper they're written on".
Rather than a cut, he said, it's "a re-estimation of commitments".
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