NAPLAN Cuts and Crowded Classrooms: Melbourne Families Say the System Is Breaking

Victorian public school enrolments have surged past 560,000 students for the first time, yet families across Melbourne's inner and middle suburbs say the infrastructure and staffing to support that growth simply hasn't kept pace. With the new school year now halfway through and the federal government's NAPLAN review still unresolved, frustration is boiling over in school councils, community halls and WhatsApp groups from Brunswick to Dandenong.

The timing matters. The Albanese government is under sustained pressure over education funding after this year's federal budget allocated $2.1 billion over four years toward the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement, but critics — including the Victorian Department of Education's own advisory panel — say that figure falls roughly $400 million short of what Victorian public schools need to meet the Schooling Resource Standard by 2028. Meanwhile, NAPLAN data released in May showed that one in four Victorian Year 9 students did not meet proficiency benchmarks in numeracy, a figure that has barely shifted since 2023.

On the Ground in Footscray and Fitzroy

At Footscray City Primary School on Droop Street, the school council met twice in June to discuss a chronic shortage of specialist teachers, particularly in science and languages. Parents at the school say literacy support classes that once ran four days a week were cut to two days this term due to staffing constraints. One multilingual family from the Maribyrnong area, who have two children enrolled, told The Daily Melbourne through a community liaison officer that they felt the school was doing its best but that resources were simply "not there."

The picture is similar at Fitzroy High School on Queens Parade, where a parent working group called the School Funding Now Coalition has collected more than 340 signatures on a petition to the state government demanding urgent investment in mental health support staff. The school currently has one part-time wellbeing counsellor servicing approximately 680 enrolled students — a ratio that the Australian Counselling Association recommends should be no worse than one counsellor per 500 students.

Community members at both schools say the pressure isn't just financial. Changing demographics are reshaping what schools need to deliver. In the City of Maribyrnong, which covers Footscray and surrounds, more than 47 per cent of residents speak a language other than English at home, according to the 2021 Census. Schools there are absorbing newly arrived families under the federal government's Humanitarian Program, which resettled 13,750 people across Australia in the 2024–25 financial year. English as an Additional Language or Dialect — known as EAL/D — funding has not been adjusted since 2022.

Universities Feeling It Too

It isn't only schools. At RMIT University's City campus on Swanston Street, international student enrolments dropped 11 per cent year-on-year after the federal government's new International Student Cap Policy took effect in January 2026. For students already enrolled, that has translated into fewer tutorial sessions and larger lecture cohorts, with some first-year engineering tutorials now running groups of 35 — nearly double the university's own recommended maximum of 18. A student representative from the RMIT Student Union said affected students raised the issue formally with faculty management in May but had yet to receive a substantive written response.

The University of Melbourne's Parkville campus is facing similar pressure, with the Faculty of Education reporting in its June quarterly update that 12 per cent of graduate teaching placements for Semester 2 are still unconfirmed, partly because many state schools are wary of taking on additional supervised staff when their own resourcing is already thin.

The Victorian Department of Education is expected to table its school infrastructure audit findings before the state parliament's Education and Training Committee by September 30. Families wanting to raise concerns before then can make submissions directly to the committee through its online portal until August 15. Several parent groups, including the Victorian Council of School Organisations — known as VICSO — are coordinating a joint submission and have invited school councils across metropolitan Melbourne to contribute specific data on staffing ratios and facilities needs before the July 25 deadline.