Funding to Malek Fahd Islamic School axed over concerns about financial management

9 Feb 2016,

(Translation of this article appears in Arabic section)

The Federal Government has axed funding to an Islamic school in Sydney's south-west, saying it failed to address concerns about how the money was being spent.

The Malek Fahd Islamic School, which has several campuses including its largest one in Greenacre, and more than 2,400 students, received $19 million in funding from the Government in the past year.

Education Minister Simon Birmingham said the Government would stop funding the school, starting from April 8, because the money was not being spent only on education.

The decision comes after a review into six school authorities affiliated with the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC), after concerns were raised about the group profiting from taxpayer funds distributed to the schools.

"Unfortunately, the authority that operates Malek Fahd Islamic School was not able to demonstrate to my department that they had addressed the significant concerns about their financial management and governance arrangements raised during the formal compliance review of their operations," Mr Birmingham said.

"Last year the department issued a formal compliance notice when it found that the school authority was not complying with fundamental governance, financial and accountability requirements of the Australian Education Act 2013.

"After carefully considering the response to the issues raised in the compliance notice, my department had to make the difficult decision to revoke the funding approval.

The NSW Department of Education said they would "continue to work with the Commonwealth Department of Education and Training on these matters".

John Quessy the NSW and ACT secretary of the Independent Education Union said the school may have to close.

"We'll need to seek a meeting with the school to find out will they still be operating," Mr Quessy said.

In December last year, the ABC obtained leaked documents alleging some AFIC representatives had received up to $500,000 of the funding distributed to its schools.

The documents showed that a $1.4 million loan was issued from the Malek Fahd school to AFIC, while the school's business manager received hundreds of thousands for "unidentified services".