Which schools provide financial data publicly? Not the PMSA schools.
The debate about the financial management of our schools has been raging for the past two weeks. While there has been confusion and conjecture, there is in fact a very simple way for the PMSA to help us make sense of it all – by releasing the financials of the schools.
Anthony Moore’s independent report “Position of an Informed Person” was drawn from publicly available information. While the information may have been unpalatable to some, it was never new information. Nor was the information incorrect.
In an ABC interview on November 3 last year, the PMSA’s Greg Adsett stated that the schools were “viable” and “growing”. He also said the schools’ financial information was readily available via the ACNC website – which is not the case. In fact, the four PMSA schools have never published their individual results on the ACNC website. But this is exactly where a parent should be able to go to easily assess the financial state of the school they choose to send their child to.
If you look at the Top 20 private schools (via the “Better Education” website) you will see that 95% of those schools in Melbourne publish individual school financial data on the ACNC website. In Sydney the figure is 90% and in Brisbane, if you exclude the PMSA schools from the list, 94% of those schools do so as well.
The vast majority of these top tier private schools have no problems publishing financial information per school, even those who belong to large religious groups such as the Anglican Church, the Uniting Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Baptist Church, the Lutheran Church and the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, many schools publish more information than they are required to.
So even both the Moderators and their counterparts in the other states are familiar with this practice. Why not the PMSA?
Beyond PMSA is aware of stakeholders who have requested these individual school financial reports. They have been told that such financial information is “Commercial in Confidence”.
It seems a complete about turn from Mr Adsett to go from saying on 3 November last year that all this individual schools’ financial information is publicly available on the ACNC website, to now asserting that it can’t be provided to stakeholders at all because of the legalese term “Commercial in Confidence”.
So, what is commercial in confidence?
It is a term of classification that identifies information, intellectual property or trade secrets that, if disclosed, may result in damage to a party’s commercial interests. You would expect confidentiality deeds and other protections to accompany such information. It also relates to information that, if disclosed, can give cause to an action for breach of confidence.
But is that what we have here?
The stakeholders who asked for the financial information asked for information that is already submitted to the Non-State Schools Accreditation Board, and to the Federal and State Education Departments. Such information can be obtained via right to information requests. And the exact same information is published by the vast majority of other top tier private schools in Australia without any concerns or damage to their commercial interests.
So, is this information really commercial in confidence? Or is this the use of legal terms to avoid something which would not cause damage to the schools, but merely be embarrassing to the PMSA Councillors?
Beyond PMSA calls on the PMSA to publish this information via the ACNC website as has been previously publicly stated. It is very easy to do – just login and upload.
If you want to dispute what is in the independent Moore report, isn’t that the only way? I think the stakeholders in these schools and our students deserve better. Don’t you?
