4 key changes you may have missed in the new school funding agreement

Queensland and the federal government have reached an agreement on school funding. This means all Australian states and territories are now signed up to new arrangements, which officially began at the start of 2025.

The agreement follows more than a year of negotiations between the federal and state governments.

The agreements mean government schools will receive 25% of funding from the federal government, up from 20%. Cash-strapped state and territory governments now only have to find 75% (down from 80%).

In some good news for schools, it also means there is now a firm plan to “fully fund” public schools by 2034. This means they will get 100% of the funding recommended by the schooling resource standard (or school funding mechanism) – albeit more than a decade after it was first recommended by the Gonski review in 2011.

Much of the debate about the agreements has understandably focused on the funding split between federal and state governments.

But the agreements also tie vital funding for schools to specific targets and reforms for the next ten years. There is plenty of fine print.

Here are four major changes we can expect to see in schools and classrooms around Australia.

Read more: Underfunded? Overfunded? How school funding works in Australia

1. A ‘unique’ identifier for all students

The new agreement will see all students receive a “unique student identifier” as part of a national system.

This is a number all students will have from the time they start school. It would follow them through school to tertiary education or any other further study or training.

The idea was first agreed to by the former Council of Australian Governments in 2009 and is already in place for university and vocational education students.

A long time in the planning, it was included in the last school funding agreement, which expired at the end of 2024, despite little progress.

At the moment, education systems can easily lose track of students. For example, pre-COVID an estimated 50,000 children and young people were not officially tracked by education authorities.

The identifier number means governments will be able to track students across school systems. For example, if they move from the public system to the private system. Or if they move states or begin homeschooling.

The identifier will also provide a greater understanding of the pathways taken by young people after school and potentially make it easier to link senior high schooling with TAFE and other vocational studies.

Introducing a bill to set up architecture for the indentifier last year, federal Education Minister Jason Clare said it would have “robust privacy measures”, including protection under the Privacy Act.

Read more: NSW has finally struck a school funding deal. What does this mean for schools and students?

2. A new numeracy check

Along with rolling out a well-publicised national phonics check for Year 1 (which some states are already doing), the new agreements include a numeracy check for young students.

While numeracy is checked as part of NAPLAN in Year 3, the test was not designed to provide diagnostic data on individual students.

The new checks will be used to identify students and schools in need of extra support.

So far, we have few details on the design or time frames. The checks may also need significant research and development to work effectively. But existing programs (such as in South Australia) show screening checks have the potential to provide better monitoring and resourcing for student needs.

3. A review of how school funding is calculated

The new agreement also flags two more significant reviews.

One will be on the way school funding is calculated – the first review since the current system was devised in 2011.

The schooling resource standard is an estimate of how much total public funding a school needs to meet its students’ educational needs.

In 2025, the base rates are A$13,977 for primary students and $17,565 for high school students. On top of these, there are six loadings to provide extra funding for students and schools with additional needs. This includes students with disability, Indigenous students and students in remote areas.

But as a 2023 Productivity Commission review noted, some individual students qualify under multiple categories, and “the effects can be compounding”. This means this level of disadvantage needs more understanding and policy adjustment.

The review will examine the methodology behind the base rate and loadings. As part of this, it will hopefully look at transparency around school funding arrangements. The Australian National Audit Office identified this as an issue as far back as 2017.

4. A review of how schools are measured

There will also be a review of the national Measurement Framework for Schooling in Australia. This details key performance measures for schooling, such as attendance, NAPLAN results and school completion.

This framework usually has just minor adjustments about every couple of years. But a more significant overhaul is now in the works, with states agreeing a review will look at “possible new and updated measures”.

These could include indicators for students’ engagement and learning growth, as well as outcomes for students with disability and the teaching workforce.

An improved national data set holds enormous potential for addressing educational challenges, like declining participation rates, school refusal and teacher shortages.

Elsewhere in the new agreement, states and territories also agreed to “better understand” how socioeconomic diversity and school attendance are impacting student learning. This can be seen as high-level acknowledgement the current reporting mechanisms and data on students need to improve.

Now we need to see progress

The new schools agreement contains some promising new measures to improve outcomes for students and teachers. But we now need to see them implemented.

As the Productivity Commission and National Audit Office have previously noted, just because something is included in a school funding agreement, does not necessarily mean it will happen on time or as planned.