Australia’s largest Islamic school loses appeal over funding cuts

Sydney Islamic school Malek Fahd has lost an appeal to overturn a federal government decision to pull $20 million in funding.

The federal government withdrew millions of dollars in funding for Australia’s largest Islamic School – which hosts more than 2400 students – back in February over concerns the money wasn’t being spent on education.

Malek Fahd Islamic School in Greenacre, in Sydney’s south-west, is set to lose the funding by Friday this week, but says it has enough funding to continue operations until the end of the year.

The school’s lawyer, Rick Mitry, has advised that in the meantime, Malek Fahd intends to take the case to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and even the High Court, if necessary.

Mr Mitry said the federal education department’s decision to proceed with revoking funding was disappointing, particularly given the fact the school did everything to comply with the orders in the past two months.

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham announced he would proceed with the original decision to pull funding in a statement today.

The move comes in the wake of an audit ordered by the department, following ongoing governance and financial mismanagement at six schools run by Australian peak Muslim body the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC).

The other schools are located in Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and the ACT.

In Australia, private schools receive a certain amount of government funding (how much depends on quite complicated formulas, largely based on the socio-economic status of the students attending the school). This is - in my view, and the view of most Australian conservatives, I think - a good thing. It creates a lot of choice for parents besides the local government school, and also means government schools have to lift their game or it becomes obvious when they are good enough.

But the funding is required to be spent on education in the core secular subjects of the curriculum (religious education and similar are to be paid for by tuition fees). It's very rare for there to be an audit about this (generally there is an assumption that if it costs $15,000 to educate a kid in a government school, and a private school gets about $8,000 in funding (which are about the average numbers) it can be reasonably safely assumed they are spending at least that much on the secular subjects. An audit like the one directed at the Islamic schools is unusual and is a sign of real concern that they've been funnelling money... somewhere... and the risk must be acknowledged that it's being funnelled to groups that are not in the best interest of Australia. So this cutting of funding is at least a step in the right direction.

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