Victoria’s latest school funding agreement freezes public schools below the Schooling Resource Standard, formalising stagnation while preserving the language of reform. Delay is not neutral – it compounds disadvantage and entrenches inequality.

Victoria likes to call itself the ’education state’. In reality, it may simply be the most visible expression of a deeper national failure and one Australians have seen before.

The latest school funding agreements were presented as progress. In Victoria, however, the new arrangement does something far more revealing: it raises no funding levels at all. Public schools are now locked into the same proportion of the Schooling Resource Standard they received in 2023 and 2024, with the new agreement freezing funding levels through 2026 and providing no pathway for improvement thereafter.

This is not reform delayed. It is reform suspended.

Across Australia, governments continue to affirm their commitment to equity, transparency and needs-based funding. Yet public schools, which educate the vast majority of disadvantaged and Indigenous students remain funded below the SRS. What distinguishes Victoria is not the existence of underfunding, but the decision to formalise stagnation in a new agreement while presenting it as responsible governance.

The commonwealth–state stand-off over school funding is now familiar. The commonwealth says it is willing to increase its share but cannot do so without a matching state commitment. Victoria replies that it would act, but only if the commonwealth moves first.

Both positions sound reasonable. Both are politically defensible. And together they ensure that funding levels do not change.

The result is a form of policy paralysis that benefits governments more than schools. Each side can claim intent. Each can shift responsibility. And public schools, particularly those serving low-SES and Indigenous........

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