Several public schools have been pleading with the West Australian government to be allowed to use federal funds to directly appoint wellbeing professionals instead of having to use labour hire firms, including religious ones that recruit chaplains based on religious credentials, documents reveal.

In emails to the state’s Department of Education in 2024/25, schools asked if they could use the funds from the National Student Wellbeing Program (NSWP) to hire wellbeing officers directly – meaning, through the department.

Some schools raised concerns about “religious elements” of the external providers supplying workers for the school chaplaincy and wellbeing support program, and about not being able to source workers to meet their requirements.

The Rationalist Society of Australia has obtained the emails under freedom of information (FOI) laws, having requested documents related to the government’s trial of the direct-hire option at one school.

In response to the schools’ emails, the department said that the current state government policy was that chaplaincy/student wellbeing officer funds could not be used to directly hire professional wellbeing staff, but acknowledged in one response that “a significant body of work” was “being undertaken to attempt to bring this concept to fruition”.

The federal government gives $5.1 million in NSWP funds to Western Australia each year, while the Cook government contributes an additional $28 million per year to what is called the ‘NSWP/Chaplain and Student Wellbeing Officer Program’.

In 2025, the program employed 531 chaplains and student wellbeing officers in public schools across the state.

Among the documents, a briefing paper to the education minister, Sabine Winton, noted that the federal rules governing the NSWP funding were flexible enough to allow direct hiring by schools and state education departments, but that the state’s “current approved approach” was for schools to engage the third-party contractors.

A 2024 ‘paper’ for the department’s leadership team acknowledged there was increasing demand from schools to be able to directly hire wellbeing support staff, and recommended that the department reassess its position.

The same document detailed potential impacts on existing service providers of allowing schools to directly employ, including that contracts had been entered into in “good faith” with “without ‘competition’ from the Department”.

Under the state’s ‘NSWP/Chaplain and Student Wellbeing Officer Program’, payments of between $20,000 to $30,000 are made available for schools to purchase a chaplain or wellbeing officer from six approved providers.

In Western Australia, Christian organisations such as YouthCare and Scripture Union are among the major approved providers, but they use discriminatory hiring practices that require candidates to show religious credentials.

Moving to direct hire through the department would mean that religious credentials could no longer be used to appoint staff to the roles.

One school told the department that the ‘chaplaincy model’ had “raised ongoing concerns, particularly due to its religious elements”.

“Although religious content is not permitted in public schools, in my experience aspects of it can still subtly emerge, which has created several issues with our school context,” the email said.

Another email reveals that the principals at several schools in one area had been unable to appoint suitable workers to meet their needs through the third-party providers and “would like to request an exception” to the restriction on using NSWP funds for direct employment.

As such, schools have been “forced to go without” and “forgo the funds allocated to our school”, the documents reveal.

“We believe this is a matter of priority in order to access these funds that are intended to increase support for student welfare and wellbeing,” the email said.

The documents show that the Department of Education recouped almost $2.8 million from 185 schools that were unable to engage a chaplain or student wellbeing office through the third-party providers.

Late last year, the RSA sought answers from Minister Winton after a Labor MP told parliament that a pilot program allowing the use of funds for direct employment was taking place at a Perth primary school in his electorate.

The documents obtained under FOI reveal that trials actually took place at four schools in 2025, with the outcomes of those trials set to “help inform future strategies that address and support student wellbeing”.

Since 2024, the department has also pledged to undertake a “commissioning” process to review the options, including direct hire. However, in documents from 2026 there was still no indication that the review had begun.

Advocacy group WA Public School Alliance, which is leading the push for schools to be able to directly employ wellbeing support workers, is now calling on public school Parents and Citizens (P&C) associations to write to government MPs as part of its ‘Better Funding for Student Wellbeing’ campaign.

Further background

Since the Albanese government renamed the National School Chaplaincy Program (NSCP) and introduced an option for schools to appoint either a chaplain or a secular student wellbeing officer, some states have witnessed a significant increase in schools choosing secular workers over religious chaplains.

In 2021, Western Australia’s Equal Opportunity Commissioner told the RSA that the requirements of religious-third party providers for chaplains to have religious credentials constituted “prima-facie religious conviction discrimination” under the state’s equal opportunity laws.

As the RSA has reported in recent years, public school communities have overwhelmingly called for the state to provide secular wellbeing support and to end the outsourcing arrangements.

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Si Gladman is Executive Director at the Rationalist Society of Australia. He also hosts ‘The Secular Agenda’ podcast.

Image: Priscilla Du Preez (Unsplash)