Small schools are not more expensive. This may come as a surprise to anyone who has seen the Government’s misleading cost per student figures. All schools have some fixed costs regardless of how many students attend the school, and then the costs increase linearly with the number of students.

This can be seen in the following graph, which plots total cost of ACT Primary Schools versus size (student enrolment):

There are some clear outliers on this plot. Turner Primary and Gold Creek School are much more expensive than one might expect for their size and conversely the Cooperative School and Tharwa are much cheaper. The red line through the points in the above plot is a line of best fit which does not include the four labelled schools.

Turner school provides facilities for physically impaired students, so it is not surprising it costs more to run than other schools of similar size. Similarly the Cooperative school is partially community run, so it might be expected to come out cheaper than one would expect. The really surprising results are the low cost of Tharwa school and the high cost of Gold Creek.

This is still not that useful if we want to understand how the Government plans to save money by closing schools. The total cost of a school includes items that the Government has not included in it’s savings document. These are depreciation, other in school expenses and educational and corporate support costs. In fact, the savings outlined in the budget are based only on reductions in Schools Based Management (SBM) and salary expenses. The plot below shows SBM + salary expenses plotted against enrolment (as above):

A line of best fit, excluding the labelled schools, is shown in red. Even on this measure Gold Creek School is very expensive. The Education Department have not given any explanation for this.
These graphs show that all schools have a fixed cost and after that the cost is proportional to the enrolment.

If the tuggeranong figures are a shambles then the numbers for North West Belconnen are a farce. The total number of primary school students in their North West Belconnen region in 2010 is projected to be 2515. This is for the current situation. Under the Towards 2020 proposal* it is 3089, a difference of 574. This is largely due to the students from Holt and Higgins being double counted. They have been redistributed to surrounding schools but the new West Belconnen school (P-6 initially) has also been included.

How to fix it? Let’s start with treating Belconnen as one region. Splitting Belconnen up was only ever a political ploy to make the school closures more palatable.

Here are the projected 2010 enrolments for Belconnen as given in the Towards 2020 proposal:

.          School    Status quo Proposal Difference
1       Charnwood PS        175      220         45
2           Evatt PS        140      430        290
3          Florey PS        345      480        135
4           Flynn PS        150        0       -150
5          Fraser PS        350      374         24
6         Higgins PS        190        0       -190
7            Holt PS        150        0       -150
8          Latham PS        195      310        115
9       Macgregor PS        325      350         25
10 Miles Franklin PS        370      425         55
11   Mount Rogers PS        125        0       -125
12    West Belconnen          0      500        500
13         Aranda PS        350      350          0
14           Cook PS        135        0       -135
15       Giralang PS        145        0       -145
16         Hawker PS        210      210          0
17         Kaleen PS        395      450         55
18      Macquarie PS        220      275         55
19    Maribyrnong PS        185      350        165
20 Southern Cross PS        175      110        -65
21     Weetangera PS        250      330         80

It is not clear how to remedy the numbers for Belconnen. If we assume all of Higgins and Holt go to the new West Belconnen School, plus 65 from Southern Cross, then we get 405 for West Belconnen. In the ballpark for the Towards 2020 number of 500. That leaves 125 from Mt Rogers and 150 from Flynn to be redistributed.

The Towards 2020 plan redistributes pupil numbers where they will conveniently fit, not where they might actually want to go. Just to get some idea of the situation in 2010 we will make some arbitrary assumptions about where to place the displaced students.
Starting with Flynn, their closest schools would be Charnwood, Fraser and Latham. Charnwood is not a destination of choice. To get to Latham they would have to go under Ginninderra Drive. Fraser is full already. Regardless we’ll split the Flynn kids three ways, 50 each to Charnwood, Fraser and Latham.

The obvious choices for kids who currently attend Mt Rogers would be Miles Franklin and Evatt. Miles Franklin is fairly full, so we’ll top it up with 55 kids and the other 70 we will place in Evatt.

Kaleen and Maribyrnong only have to accommodate 145 from Giralang, but they are listed as changing by 55 and 165 respectively. Perhaps someone thought they were redistributing 220 students? In any case if we assign 70 to Kaleen and 75 to Maribyrnong this is the result:

.          School    Status quo Proposal Difference
1       Charnwood PS        175      225         50
2           Evatt PS        140      210         70
3          Florey PS        345      345          0
4           Flynn PS        150        0       -150
5          Fraser PS        350      400         50
6         Higgins PS        190        0       -190
7            Holt PS        150        0       -150
8          Latham PS        195      245         50
9       Macgregor PS        325      325          0
10 Miles Franklin PS        370      425         55
11   Mount Rogers PS        125        0       -125
12    West Belconnen          0      405        405
13         Aranda PS        350      350          0
14           Cook PS        135        0       -135
15       Giralang PS        145        0       -145
16         Hawker PS        210      210          0
17         Kaleen PS        395      465         70
18      Macquarie PS        220      275         55
19    Maribyrnong PS        185      260         75
20 Southern Cross PS        175      110        -65
21     Weetangera PS        250      330         80

Which adds up to 4580 students in total for the status quo projections and the Towards 2020 proposal.

Under my scenario Evatt goes from a projected enrolment of 430 down to 210! The Department needs to release some amended figures. How can parents even hope to plan where their kids will go when the figures are so wrong?

* I chose option 2 as it is simpler to add up the numbers, otherwise I would have to make messy assumptions about how many of the year 5-8 students in the Melba middle school ended were previously in Charnwood.

Update: I think I have worked out the South East Belconnen inconsistency. Of the Cook kids 55 go to Macquarie and 80 to Weetangera (and none to Aranda … hmmm). There were 65 kids left to place from Southern Cross (going from P-6 to P-3), so they have plonked them in … wait for it .. Kaleen! Huh? I am pretty sure they have then double counted these kids and assigned them to the new P-10 super school at West Belconnen.

That demountable buildings will be required to cater for students displaced by school closures is a disgrace (“Demountables fear for pupils”, July 28, p4). It shows the poor level of planning in the Government’s proposals.

From the Government’s projections, by 2010 one third of primary schools will be above 90% capacity with little or no spare room. These are 2010 figures. By the Governments own reckoning even more students need to be accomodated in 2007, 2008 and 2009. By design, then, there will be overcrowding in one third of Canberra’s primary schools.

The Government’s own population projections assume a steadily decreasing fertility rate and yet we know that fertility has increased for the last four years in the ACT. Under the Towards 2020 proposal, displaced students have been “assigned” to other schools to conveniently round out capacity figures with no thought to where parents will actually want to send their children.

We have a recipe for overcrowding in our public primary schools. High irony, except for the affected kids and their parents, who, it should be noted, are eligible to vote.

When the Stanhope Government first released their Towards 2020 plan they used misleading statistics to paint small schools in as bad a light as possible. Their per-pupil costs included costs like depreciation. When fixed costs such as depreciation are calculated the cost per pupil for smaller schools will always look worse than larger ones.

Later we found out that their projected savings were only calculated on some salary savings and schools based management (SBM) costs. I’ll have something to say about the SBM later, but if we take them at their word and just rank primary schools by salary and schools based management costs we get the following list (* = closing school):

Rank                School          Cost per student ($)
1                Amaroo School             4902
2               Aranda Primary             5686
3               Majura Primary             5845
4               Gordon Primary             5862
5             Theodore Primary             5891
6              Chapman Primary             5986
7             Red Hill Primary             6045
8       Charles Conder Primary             6053
9       Miles Franklin Primary             6112
10 North Ainslie Primary + IEC             6191
11             Torrens Primary             6211
12              Fraser Primary             6234
13             Forrest Primary             6253
14              Kaleen Primary             6347
15             Lyneham Primary             6352
16             Arawang Primary             6412
17     Wanniassa Hills Primary             6415
18             Ainslie Primary             6446
19             Calwell Primary             6471
20          Weetangera Primary             6487
21        Hughes Primary + IEC             6501
22            Bonython Primary             6531
23          Palmerston Primary             6658
24              Monash Primary             6669
25     Isabella Plains Primary             6685 *
26              Garran Primary             6762
27           Ngunnawal Primary             6766
28              Curtin Primary             6769
29              Florey Primary             6857
30           Macgregor Primary             6872
31         Telopea Park School             6884
32              Farrer Primary             6941
33             Gilmore Primary             7028 *
34              Hawker Primary             7149
35            Wanniassa School             7205
36            Campbell Primary             7333
37          Richardson Primary             7336
38          Cooperative School             7396
39             Higgins Primary             7409 *
40              Fadden Primary             7532
41            Giralang Primary             7589 *
42  Mt Rogers Community School             7682 *
43           Charnwood Primary             7782
44                Cook Primary             7826 *
45               Evatt Primary             7850
46      Southern Cross Primary             7854
47            Chisholm Primary             7872
48           Gold Creek School             7877
49               Flynn Primary             7911 *
50           Macquarie Primary             7950
51        Mt Neighbour Primary             8027 *
52              Urambi Primary             8311
53                Hall Primary             8379 *
54              Latham Primary             8515
55 Village Creek Primary + IEC             8589 *
56         Maribyrnong Primary             8791
57               Duffy Primary             9010
58              Gowrie Primary             9333
59                Holt Primary             9519 *
60              Mawson Primary             9747
61              Taylor Primary             9830
62          Yarralumla Primary             9836
63              Weston Primary            10210 *
64               Lyons Primary            10447
65              Turner Primary            11250
66         Narrabundah Primary            12393
67             Melrose Primary            13186 *
68              Rivett Primary            13602 *
69              Tharwa Primary            15720 *

This is a much more useful list, and surprising in some ways. It still does not take into account children with special needs (the Government have not released any data that would allow one to do that). What is interesting is how inexpensive Turner is, even with all the special needs kids that they have.

Also worth noting is that all but the two cheapest and ten most expensive schools are within one standard deviation ($1986) of the mean ($7744). Of the ten most expensive (60-69) only four are listed to close.

Why are they closing Isabella Plains (ranked 25) and Gilmore (ranked 33)?

Gold Creek, a big new school operating at 91% capacity, costs $7877 per student (ranked 48). There are six schools to be closed which are cheaper.

The projected enrolment at 2010 for Turner Primary under the Towards 2020 proposal is listed as the capacity (350), rather than unchanged from the 2010 status quo projections (275).

The projected enrolments in Tuggeranong under the Towards 2020 plan do not match those quoted for the status quo.There are five hundred more students under the Towards 2020 proposal.

Two glaring errors are obvious:

Status quo:

Towards 2020 proposal:

The 2010 enrolment at Theodore under the 2020 proposals is 423. This is an error, 423 is the current enrolment. This should be the same as the status quo 2010 projection, i.e. 315.

Wanniassa Hills Primary has a 2010 enrolment of 185 under the new proposal. This is the status quo 2010 enrolment for Wanniassa Primary. The projected enrolment of Wanniassa Hills Primary should not change under these proposals, so should be 290.

In addition the enrolments for Wanniassa P-10 and Chisholm Community P-10 have both been massivey inflated.

The projected enrolment for Wanniassa P-10 is 685. It should be 485, i.e the addition of the status quo 2010 enrolments of Wanniassa Primary (184) and Wanniassa High School (300).
The 2010 enrolment for Chisholm Community school is 1070. It should be 750, i.e the addition of the status quo 2010 enrolments of Gilmore Primary (175), Chisholm Primary (200) and Caroline Chisholm High School (375).

After the above adjustments are made there is a net loss of 20 students. This is because the 25 students from Tharwa have not been assigned to a school (they could easily be accomodated in Charles Conder or Gordon). The net loss is only 20 because Bonython (+145), Monash (+50) and Richardson (+40) add up to 235, but only 230 will need to be relocated from Isabella Plains by 2010.
I look forward to the Education Department releasing a revised document.