Education

Demographic and Social Change:

Implications for Education Funding.

Author's:

Phil Aungles
Tom Karmel
Tim Wu

May 2000

ă Commonwealth of Australia 2000

ISBN 0 642 44471 4 (Online version)

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Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful for helpful comments on the paper received from Les Andrews, Peter Karmel and William Thorn. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs

Introduction

Implications for Education Funding

This paper identifies the likely implications of major demographic change and changes in educational participation for education funding in the longer term. In particular, the paper focuses on the ageing population, changes in educational participation and the growth of social expenditures as potential key pressures on the funding of the education sector to the Year 2021. The purpose of the paper is not to draw definitive conclusions about the future size and role of the education sector. Rather, the intention is to explore current issues and trends in this area and the environmental pressures within which policy may need to operate.

The first section of the paper discusses the trend towards an ageing population. Ignoring other changes this will lessen pressures for funding education because students are concentrated in the younger age groups. The second section considers likely trends in educational participation. The paper suggests that current levels of access to tertiary education are very high and maybe close to universal. Nevertheless increasing duration of study and lifelong learning could have important implications for future trends in participation. The third section draws on the earlier findings relating to the ageing population and trends in educational participation to explore likely longer term developments in education expenditure. In the fourth section, trends in education expenditures are placed in the broader context of likely longer term changes in social expenditures. Policy pressures in education depend not just on the impact of ageing on the education sector but more broadly on whole of government developments.

The major themes and conclusions of the paper are presented in the final section.

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