There are fears some remote Northern Territory public schools are on the brink of collapse if a controversial school funding model is not urgently scrapped.
The NT government announced late last year it would end the "effective enrolment" model, which funds schools based on attendance rather than students enrolled, in an effort to increase numbers.
An independent Deloitte review released late last year found little evidence the new funding model encouraged attendance and was, in fact, a "punitive mechanism" that targeted socio-economic factors often outside of a school's control.
It said the full transition to a new funding model would take between two and five years.
But the Australian Education Union (AEU) said that was not soon enough and, if schools were not fully funded on a needs-based model by the beginning of term one, 2024, some would struggle to survive.
"Attendance is dropping off at an alarming rate, and has been doing so over the last five to seven years," AEU NT branch president and former remote teacher Michelle Ayres said.
"If we continue to fund according to attendance, that attendance will basically drop off to almost zero."
Model sparks downward spiral
An ABC investigation late last year revealed the funding model had led to some remote schools receiving funding for less than half of their enrolled student population.
At Lajamanu school in the Central Desert region, only 66 of 173 students enrolled in 2022 were funded because of a decline in attendance.
Ms Ayres said the model had sparked a "vicious downward spiral" for some schools, stripping them of the very resources they needed to re-engage students.
"That in turn drops the attendance, which then means more resources are taken away, which means more attendance is taken away," she said.
"And the kids that have the money taken away are more likely to be kids from a low socio-economic area, kids who are Aboriginal, kids from communities, kids with English as a second language."
Since 2013, attendance rates for Year 7 students have declined right across the Northern Territory.
The most recent attendance data has revealed that in term one of 2022, nine schools recorded attendance below 30 per cent, with one school in the Barkly region plummeting to an attendance rate of 19.2 per cent.
But both the union and NT government said they would have to wait for the full 2022 year data — due to be released this year — for a comprehensive picture of attendance rates in the NT.
Transition to 'take time'
NT Acting Minister for Education Nicole Manison said the move to an enrolment-based methodology would take time to implement.
"The Minister for Education [Eva Lawler] is working through that issue very closely with the union and with schools," she said.
Former NT teacher of the year Daniel Yore said there were hopes a new national funding agreement, which aimed to see all Australian public schools 100 per cent funded, could throw an additional lifeline to struggling Territory schools.
But the federal government has recently announced it is delaying that agreement by a year to the end of 2024, to allow time for an expert advisory panel to be developed.
"But for many of our territory schools who are in crisis, this will be just too late," Mr Yore said.
"Things are just getting worse and worse and worse."
