Speakers: Sarah Dunn, School Services Advisor, ISV. Nigel Bartlett, Manager, Funding and Accountability, ISV. Angela Dynan, General Manager, VISBGA.
Sarah: Hello, everybody. Thank you for having us today. My name is Sarah Dunn. I work as the school services advisor at ISV. I’m joined by Nigel Bartlett, he is the manager of funding and Angela is also on the call. Angela Dynan will talk shortly more about what we do here at ISV.
But to give you an introduction, what is ISV who are we? We were established in 1949, we’re a not-for-profit organisation and member of ISA Independent Schools Australia. We are a membership-based organisation.
Membership is voluntary and open to all registered non-government schools in Victoria.
Currently we have 224 schools based in Melbourne and regional Victoria that educate over 155,000 students.
What do we do? So ISV we do a number of things for and on behalf of our members. We represent the views of the sector. We work on behalf of member schools, their staff, students and communities.
This includes everything from professional learning programs, which is happening down here today as we speak to, say professional learning programs for teachers, to providing assistance with school-based operations, operational issues, to giving advice on a whole range of matters.
So, we work with federal and state governments as well, a range of other bodies and organisations, including the VRQA. We promote the principle of choice in education and so on and so forth.
So, some further information about how ISV assist our members. Amongst the number of things that we do. We provide information, resources and advice to schools on a range of issues. So, anything from school bus registration to child safety, occupational health and safety, enrolment policies and procedures, all sorts of issues that we assist with.
We also provide consultancy services. We have an expert team of school improvement advisors who can guide schools through a range of tailored improvement initiatives. We also have an employment relations team at ISV. They provide information and advice on equal opportunity, teacher registration and codes of conduct, enterprise bargaining, everything to do with employment relations.
We also, as I said, we provide seminars and professional learning for teachers, all the way up to principals. We provide various research and publication services. The primary one is the Leave School Effectiveness Survey that enables you to benchmark your school against other schools in the independent school sector.
We also provide government programs and funding applications. And we also offer exclusive discounts on products and services through our IS procurement team on a range of laptops and other services, including, sort of anti-spyware software that schools can purchase at a discount through our membership.
So, what can ISV do for you at this moment? Nigel and I, often meet with prospective schools and discuss at the high level what it means to become a school in Victoria and how to get that registration.
We often talk about things like, what is your .. and what is known as a school. We talk about the registration process and some realistic timeframes. We talk about governance arrangements, funding and planning and infrastructure.
And our role is really to act as a sounding board to bounce ideas off one another, to try and make the registration process more streamlined for you. And I’ve included our contact details there.
If you would like to set up a meeting with ISV, you can do so by calling that number.
Nigel: And, to that, I thought now would be a good time to directly address one of the questions in the chat from [..] around the timing of grants to schools.
Angela, our colleague, will shortly talk about how it works for capital funding, but for recurrent funding unfortunately the short answer is you are not entitled to receive any government recurrent funding until you are up and operating and have kids at the school. The state government tends to be a bit more flexible and reactive than the Commonwealth. Unfortunately for you, the Commonwealth funding is a larger amount than the state, and you get a bigger percentage of it early. The practical reality is that when we talk to schools, we generally recommend that in your first year of operations, you probably need to look at having six months of cash flow from other sources in case there are any delays in government funding.
So typically, the earliest that you would expect to see, Commonwealth recurrent funding coming through is in mid-April. And what we’re hearing, for instance, this year is that schools are not getting that until mid-May. So, if you set up a situation where you’re expecting to get that government grant income very early in the year, then you are going to have considerable (difficulties with) cash flow. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s probably what you need to know.
Sarah: So how do you join ISV? Once you obtain registration from the VRQA you can apply to ISV to become a member. That then gets ratified by the ISV board. As we have here, you can contact. I put my colleagues’ details there, Kate Anderson, to obtain the application form. You can do that via email. Or again, you can find that number there and contact us directly.
That’s all from me I believe.
Nigel: Other than to say that again, as people who are not yet, in registered schools, we cannot provide the full access of member services to you because you are not members. But we are quite happy to speak to you about those high-level things that Sarah identified, and we would certainly encourage you, if you haven’t already touched base, to set up a time where we can go through some of these things with you in more detail than we’re able to cover in 5 to 10 minutes.
Sarah: And once you do become a member, then all those member services will become available to you.
Angela Dynan: Hi, everybody. My name’s Angela Dynan and I am the general manager of the Victorian Independent Schools Block Grant Authority. So, I’m going to talk to you a little bit about, government capital funding, but it’s going to be very generic and very quick.
So, what’s important to say from the outset is that non-government schools are primarily responsible for their own school facilities. I’m not going to talk about an unlimited bucket of funding to build new schools. There’s no obligation on government to build new non-government schools, but there are government capital funding programs that can provide supplementary funds to assist schools with capital works if and when it’s needed.
There are 2 programs there. There on the slide, it states the Australian Government Capital Grants Program. That’s an annual program, and the Victorian Government Building Fund for non-government schools. The Victorian government capital funding sort of comes and goes.
There’s 2 more years of this one, and we don’t know yet whether it will continue beyond 2027. It may, but we don’t know. The Victorian Independent Schools Block Grant Authority, the VISBGA, administers both programs, and they both essentially have the same objectives and criteria. Both programs are aimed towards lower fee, higher education, or disadvantaged students in school communities. So, they both cater for projects where new facilities are needed due to enrolment pressures or to upgrade existing facilities for the current cohort of students, the federal program, sometimes there might be, a particular priority. For example, at the moment they’re talking about environmentally sustainable design. So, projects, that focus on environmentally sustainable design, would be good ones to a apply for.
The State program. There are specific assessment criteria. So, for example, we rank applications according to the location of the school, whether the school is in one of Melbourne’s growth corridors. But essentially, even though there’s different criteria for the State program, they’re both programs targeted towards those lower fee educational and disadvantaged school communities.
These are just a couple of slides that talk about the types of things that can be funded. And it’s basically anything that a school needs. but focusing there on the word need rather than the word wants. So, investigating the need for school facilities. So that’s master planning. We can help schools with that process. Funding can be used to purchase land with or without buildings. That’s only the Australian government program.
Funding like the planning alteration, extension, demolition or refurbishment of parts of the building development or preparation of land for buildings. So, if you can, apply for a project to do the site works, establish the site.
If you’re then putting dismantlable buildings onto that site, service upgrades and installation. Usually, they’re part of a larger project, but if there was, you know, if the work needed to be done on its own, then you could certainly apply for that.
Furniture and equipment, usually part of a project and furniture and equipment for libraries as well. So, pretty much anything can be funded. It doesn’t matter whether it’s classrooms or performing arts centres or gymnasiums. It all comes down to what the school needs at a particular point in time.
The thing to keep in mind is that funds can’t be used retrospectively. So, we’re talking about future projects, and it’s important to note that, the application process begins pretty much 18 months before funds are available. So, planning and timing is very important with capital development.
Just to give you an idea of the timeline, this is this year’s timeline for the next round of funding. But those years 2024 and 2025 can be transposed to any future year. So, we hold a briefing every year for interested schools that’s in July or August. And then we ask schools for an expression of interest. Applications open usually late October, early November each year, and they close early February. And then there’s pretty much a 6–7-month assessment process.
We start by visiting all applicant schools. The VISBGA has a board. And the board comes out and visits the schools, talks to you about your application and future capital development. In June, the board meets, and they make what we call provisional recommendations for funding. So, we then contact schools that have a project that the board is looking to support. And you’re given that the opportunity to develop the design further and you submit that to us. And then in September of any year, the board meets again and finalises their recommendations for funding and submits them to the respective government. And then schools are advised October, November of whether their application has been successful.
And then there’s funding agreements that are signed with the BGA, so schools manage their own capital development project. But, it’s managed within the respective program guidelines. And then the implementation is overseen by the BGA. So, the schools report to the BGA, the block grant authority, throughout the life of the project.
Just quickly, there’s a range of eligibility criteria. Most all achievable. These are the 3 main ones. The 3 deal breakers if you like. So, schools have to be a member of the BGA which is different to what Nigel and Sarah just spoke about being a member of ISV.
So BGA membership is different and when schools express an interest in applying, that’s when we talk about, signing the agreement to become a member of the BGA. Schools must be in receipt of recurrent funding.
Yeah, there’s an asterisk there because, and I’ll talk a little bit in a moment about new schools prior to VRQA registration. And schools must have a financial need for funding assistance. So, the funding is only available if it’s a project that the school needs to do and you’re borrowings are max-ed out and you can’t get the money from anywhere. So, you’re coming to the BGA for government funding.
Just a note on new schools. While new schools may apply for funding prior to receiving registration, a part of the assessment is being able to provide certainty of successful establishment, operation and governance. And in Victoria, that certainty is demonstrated through VRQA registration.
While it’s it is possible, the guidelines allow for schools to apply for capital funding before registration. It is much easier if schools get their registration first and then come to the VISBGA for funding, because without your registration, our board can’t really provide that certainty to government about whether you’re going to get the registration.
So, we would strongly encourage new schools to apply for capital funding after they’re up and running. But if a new school was intent on applying before registration, then these are the additional requirements that the BGA asks for. You need to give us evidence that you’ve applied for registration. So, you need to because we’re not talking about a school that wants to start off in 3- or 4-years’ time. It would need to be an application from a school that’s looking to start in the next 6 to 12 months.
So, evidence that you’ve applied for the registration certified list of confirmed enrolments. And then the last thing, which is difficult we acknowledge, but you need to provide us with a bank guarantee or another form of financial surety. It doesn’t have to be from a bank for the amount of the requested grant. And the reason for this is that, and this ties to the hesitation to recommend funding for new schools, is that the funds actually have to be repaid if you don’t get your registration within a particular period of time, and the BGA doesn’t want to put you in that position when starting up a new school, you don’t need to have to repay an awful lot of money as well.
So, the board is seeking to protect the government funding by asking for that bank guarantee. I understand, as I said at the start, this is very generic. I’m happy to have individual conversations with you, so you can contact me through ISV when the time is right for you, when things are closer.
Nigel: Angela has spoken about capital funding. Katrina has spoken about the recurrent funding that comes from the Victorian government. I’ve alluded very briefly to the recurrent funding that comes from the Commonwealth government. The final type of funding that schools can receive is what’s known as targeted funding. And this is where a particular level of government has identified either a particular group of students or a particular program, that they want to put a relatively small amount of money towards supporting. Some of those are run directly from, departments of education, and some of those are administered by Independent Schools Victoria. Really what I want to flag with you at the moment is there are programs that we provide, and that the government provides.
They are typically small amounts of money. So, our general recommendation to schools is to be aware that they’re there. And once you get registration, you can start applying for them. But actually, starting to include those, particularly in your budgeting prior to starting a school is probably not the best way to go. They tend to be small amounts of money.
I tend to say if your budget, requires targeted funding for it to balance, then you have some bigger problems that you need to worry about.
The one thing I would mention, however, is when you get close to, registering your school and opening, there is one in particular. It’s called the Camp, Sports and Excursions Fund, CSEF, through the State government. That is quite important. I again, I’m not going to go through that now, but that’s one probably where when you first opened your school at the start of the school year, you need to be fairly quick to get running in terms of getting applications from parents and then applying to the State government.
So, last thing is here are the contact details for Independent Schools Victoria, please feel free to contact Sarah or myself or Angela about any of these issues. We are happy to talk further in more detail. As I said upfront, trying to go through all of the details of this in a 20-minute presentation is clearly never going to be satisfactory, so thank you for listening.
Angela: Can I just add to that on the website, capital funding information is there. So, if you go to the ISV website and just put capital funding in the search, all that information that I spoke about is on the website.
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