More than 100,000 parents have rushed to apply in the first 48 hours of a second round of student assistance payments, worth $89 million.
The Cook Government has seized on the early rush of applications as proof technical problems that marred the first round of payments last year have been resolved.
“We have had an overwhelming response, with over 100,000 claims successfully submitted in the past few days,” a State Government spokeswoman said.
“The vast majority of claims have been made through the Service WA app.”
But Shadow Education Minister Liam Staltari is demanding the Government release a regional breakdown of data, to ensure areas with low take-up can be offered more support.
“Good data drives good policy,” Mr Staltari said.
“We will be asking for the important, region by region, school by school, breakdown . . . because the last thing we want is a vulnerable community to not be taking advantage of it.”
Education Minister Sabine Winton has previously ruled out releasing data, but has vowed the Education Department is tracking it and putting digital kiosks in regional locations where take-up was previously lower.
“It’s not acceptable at all, this is a Government that has promised gold standard transparency and yet, time and again, they haven’t released data like this,” Mr Staltari said.
“My question to the Minister is ‘what are you afraid of?’. We should be releasing data to drive good policy, to understand how we can make this work better for people.
“Refusing to release it when we know it could be valuable doesn’t speak to the gold standard transparency they’ve assured us of.”
Applications for the payments, worth $250 for secondary students and $150 for kindergarten and primary students, can be made until July 4.
