The claim
In the run-up to Saturday's NSW election, the Coalition has attacked the opposition for failing to build school infrastructure when last in government.
During a February 9 pre-election debate on 2GB's Ben Fordham Live program, Premier Dominic Perrottet said Labor's last stretch in power had meant fewer schools and hospitals "because they didn't have the means" to pay for them.
"There's a reason why, under the previous Labor government, there were no schools being built, no hospitals. They closed 90 schools across NSW," he said.
"And what we see with Labor, without an economic plan, when they were in office, they closed 90 schools."
During a televised debate on March 8, Mr Perrottet again told voters: "Under Labor, there was no infrastructure being built. No schools. They closed 90 schools."
So, did NSW Labor close 90 schools when last in office? RMIT ABC Fact Check investigates.
The verdict
Mr Perrottet's claim is misleading.
Although 83 schools were closed under Labor, another 88 were opened.
Under the Coalition, 38 schools have been closed since 2011 and another 37 opened, while 18 others have been placed "in recess".
Importantly, these numbers do not show whether infrastructure — under either government — kept pace with demand.
Small schools can be merged or replaced with larger ones, for example, or existing schools expanded through school upgrades.
Still, the number of students affected by school closures under either Labor or the Coalition was far less than the capacity added by new schools.
One expert said there can be good reasons to close a school, such as when demographic shifts cause enrolments to drop or it becomes difficult to find teachers.
Sourcing the data
Asked for the source of the Premier's claim, a spokesman for Mr Perrottet's office provided Fact Check with a list of 88 schools he said were closed between 1995 and 2011 (the year the Coalition was elected), including the year each was closed.
According to the spokesman, these dates reflect when a ministerial announcement was published in the NSW government gazette.
Fact Check was unable to verify these dates through an online search of historical gazettes.
Separately, however, the NSW Department of Education provided Fact Check with a list of every school opening and closure, by year, between 1995 and 2022.
Fact Check has relied on the department's list to assess Mr Perrottet's claim, treating 2010 as the Labor government's final year.
'Closing' a school
The department's closures data reflects when a school officially ceased operations, or when the last teacher was "withdrawn" from a school.
In the majority of cases, the ministerial announcements cited by Mr Perrottet's office trailed the department's closure dates by at least a year and, in some cases, by four years or more.
The department also supplied Fact Check with data on school openings, with these dates reflecting when a teacher was first appointed to a new school.
For both openings and closures, the official dates closely match what was previously published by the department in its annual reports, which detail "the establishment and closure of schools".
The department separately classifies schools that are closed indefinitely as being "in recess".
Scott Eacott, a professor of education and deputy director of the University of New South Wales's Gonski Institute, told Fact Check that "some schools [are placed in recess] a few times — especially small schools" while others never reopen.
The complex process for closing schools is laid out in the NSW Education Act 1990 and protocols developed in collaboration with school principal groups.
In 2015, the department told a parliamentary inquiry that most public schools are closed after "the majority of the parents of children attending the school agree to the closure".
What the data shows
Mr Perrottet claimed that Labor had "closed 90 schools" while in government.
According to the education department's data, 83 schools were closed between 1995 and 2010.
However, another 88 schools were opened over the same period, meaning a net five schools were added during Labor's time in power.
These counts include all types of government schools that offer primary or secondary education, including those for children with special needs.
The building of new schools is confirmed by budget statements throughout Labor's term (for example, 1996-97, 1999-2000 and 2009-10), and its final budget (2010-11) showed that one school was due to be completed in 2011 or later.
Some builds would have been commenced by the previous Coalition government, with the education department website noting that such projects "may take around one to three years from business case approval to completion".
What about the Coalition?
The same dataset shows that between 2011 and 2022, the latest year for which figures are available, the Coalition government closed 38 schools and opened another 37.
There was, in other words, little change in the overall number of schools during this period.
This count excludes Aurora College, a virtual school for students who are already enrolled elsewhere.
It also excludes 18 schools "in recess". Of these, eight have been closed for at least two years, including Wollar Public School (since 2018) and Collingullie Public School (since 2017).
Since Fact Check last assessed the Coalition's record on school closures, one primary school — Pooncarie Public School — has reopened.
The Coalition government has also announced a number of new school projects that are at various stages of development.
Is it a useful measure?
Importantly, school closures and openings do not tell the full story of either government's approach to school infrastructure.
For example, as Fact Check has previously noted, there has been a move towards larger schools with higher enrolments.
A basic look at enrolments data for schools closed during Labor's time in power shows that around 2,000 students were affected between 1996 (the earliest data available) and 2011, with 22 of the affected schools having enrolled five or fewer students.
Over the same period, new schools added capacity for at least 24,000 students, according to enrolments at the two-year mark for each school.
Meanwhile, the Coalition's school closures (2012 to 2022) affected fewer than 700 students but its new schools added space for more than 18,000 students.
Jordana Hunter, the Grattan Institute's education program director, told Fact Check there could be "good reasons to close schools".
"As population settlement patterns change, we often end up with very small schools. These can be really challenging to [fill] with enough high quality teachers … and can be very expensive to maintain.
"This can even be an issue in established suburbs — where there are two schools very close by, one with high enrolments and one with much lower enrolments, sometimes due to reputational challenges.
"Amalgamating enrolments with another nearby school is often the best option to ensure a quality education for children."
Professor Eacott said that the closures data would include, for example, "infants schools that amalgamate with local primary, or two schools in the same street".
He noted that school closures "have been a feature of school systems since their inception". However, citing his team's analysis of education department data from the 1840s onwards, he added that these "have actually slowed".
When it comes to keeping pace with growing student demand, governments can choose to not only build new schools but also to expand existing facilities.
The NSW Education Department supplied Fact Check with data showing that more than 150 major upgrades were completed between 2013 and early 2023.
This data covers all changes that "provide additional capacity to schools; replace existing infrastructure with modern, fit-for-purpose learning spaces and other facilities; [or] replace demountable facilities with permanent facilities".
While information on past upgrades can be found in annual reports, a department spokeswoman said a consistent dataset was only available from 2011.
Principal researcher: David Campbell
Sources
- Dominic Perrottet, 2GB leaders debate, February 9, 2023
- Dominic Perrottet, 7News leaders debate, March 8, 2023
- NSW Department of Education, Annual reports, 1998 onwards
- NSW Department of Education, Annual reports, 1997 (archived)
- NSW Department of Education, Protocols for school closures, accessed March 20, 2023
- NSW Legislative Council, Inquiry into the closure of public schools in NSW, final report, October 2015
- NSW budget: state capital program and state asset acquisition program, various years
- Fact Check, Michael Daley says NSW Government has closed more schools than it has opened. Is he correct?, March 18, 2019
- School Infrastructure NSW, Find your school
