Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I will explain it in a couple of ways. One, as I highlighted before, is that what it looks like for those schools will be a matter for the Northern Territory minister, whose letter you tabled before, as she has full autonomy—or the Territory government have full autonomy in terms of how they distribute the funding across Territory schools. However, the quantum of funding that the Territory government receives is well and truly, as I highlighted in response to your earlier questions, the highest in the nation on a per-student basis, and that is because of the particular need there.

Of course, a loadings model like this one, which provides additional loadings for Indigenous students, students of socio-educational disadvantage, for students from learning backgrounds other than English and for students with a disability, does provide, ultimately, the largest level of funding per student in the Northern Territory, rightly reflecting the very particular needs of the Territory.

So, in terms of the remote schools that you identified, while I do not offhand know the circumstances of each of those schools, I imagine that, in terms of the funding that the Territory government receives, each of them would be attracting significant levels of Indigenous student loadings; significant levels of loadings in relation to socio-educational disadvantage; significant loadings, potentially, in relation to language backgrounds other than English; possibly, significant loadings in relation to student with disability; certainly, in terms of them being remote schools, the regional schools loading; and probably the small schools loadings as well.