Government Finance Statistics, Education, Australia

Statistical revisions are carried out regularly in Government Finance Statistics (GFS) to reflect the most current information and data available.

The ABS has reclassified payments to non-government schools in the 2020-21 annual GFS publication. The ABS recognise:

• non-government schools as market producers (market, non-profit institutions)
• government payments to non-government schools as the purchase of a service on behalf of households

Under the previous classification:

• non-government schools were classified as non-market Non-Profit Institutions Serving Households (NPISH)
• government payments to non-government schools were classified as a transfer to households

This result in a reclassification to benefits to households in goods and services in GFS. Commonwealth and state government financial reporting will continue to separately recognise their funding contributions to non-government schools.

The National Accounts will implement this change in the upcoming 2021-22 release.

Divergences between state and commonwealth government financial reporting and GFS may occur because of conceptual determinations and timing recognition differences, to ensure alignment with economic activity as measured across ABS macroeconomic statistics.

These differences primarily impact:

• measures of government subsidies and other support payments to businesses and households
• non-employee expenses
• change in inventories

From 1 July 2019, government financial reporting implemented the following Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) standard changes:

• Leases (AASB 16)
• Revenue recognition (AASB 15 & 1058)
• Service Concession Arrangements (AASB 1059)

GFS outputs are consistent with the historical treatments, which has resulted in increased divergences between economic statistics publications and government financial reporting.

COVID-19 impacted a range of Government Finance Statistics series over the preceding two years.

As new government policies were announced, the key policies and conceptual determinations were discussed in articles including:

• Economic measurement during COVID-19: Selected issues in the Economic Accounts
• Classifying COVID-19 policy interventions during June quarter 2021 in macroeconomic statistics.

This release previously used catalogue number cat. no. 5518.0.55.001.