Local Schools, Local Decisions - Less Teachers, Increased Class Sizes

Local Schools, Local Decisions is being used to constrain funding to public education through long-term reductions in the number of teachers employed and the resultant increases in class sizes. It is how the Department of Education will meet its budgetary requirement to find $150 million in savings for state treasury. The policy was originally designed by the previous state Labor government under the guise of the Boston Consulting Report. This is being achieved by the decoupling of school staffing from a centralised formula. As highlighted by the Boston Consulting Report into the NSW Department of Education, since devolution policies were introduced into Victoria, funding per student has been constrained to 12% less per student compared to NSW.

Currently, NSW public schools are staffed according to a centralised formula where schools are entitled to a set number of teachers, assistant principals, head teachers and deputies based on the number of students enrolled in the school. This means that no matter how much teacher salaries may increase, schools are guaranteed a set number of staff. Schools in popular locations tend to have higher staffing costs as their average teacher salaries are higher due to the greater experience of their staff. Schools in rural areas have lower average teacher costs as they have a much higher proportion of beginning teachers.

Local Schools, Local Decisions replaces the centralised staffing formula with local school staffing budgets that allow principals to determine the number and type of teachers to employ. The way costs savings will be achieved is by constraining these budgets so that they do not keep pace with the rising costs of teacher salaries. The government will no longer have to ensure sufficient budget increases for teacher salaries as schools will have their staffing budgets capped and be forced to absorb pay increases. The immediate impact will be on teaching resources as the Local Schools policy allows principals to transfer money from resource and maintenance programs to staff salaries.It will also discourage principals from employing experienced teachers as  beginning teachers are cheaper and will save money for local school budgets. But ultimately, class sizes will have to increase to absorb the eventual staff cuts to public schools.

Public schools with experienced staff will feel the immediate effects of average staff-cost funding. There will be immediate hit to their budgets as they have above-average staff costs. No doubt some sort of transition program will be introduced to mask the effect and allow principals sufficient time to replace experienced staff with beginning teachers on temporary contracts.

Empowering Local Schools

The recent Expression of Interest (EOI) sent to NSW public schools for the Empowering Local Schools national partnership is the beginning of a concerted campaign of school devolution by state and federal governments. It will result in governments being able to constrain funding to public schools as has happened in Victoria under Jeff Kennett where schools now receive 12% less funding per student than in NSW. Worse still, governments are intent on shifting the blame for educational disadvantage from themselves and onto schools.

Governments have attempted to dress-up school-devolution as "autonomy" and claim research demonstrates that school systems with high autonomy achieve better student results. OECD research has demonstrated that school autonomy over curriculum, assessment and reporting has a beneficial effect on student learning, but there is no benefit for autonomy over staffing, finances and resources. Finland is the perfect example of school autonomy. There are no external tests and teachers determine the curriculum resulting in very high scores on international literacy and numeracy tests. NSW public schools are being offered the opposite of autonomy. The National Curriculum, A-to-E reporting and NAPLAN have restricted teacher autonomy. 

Empowering Local Schools is a pure cost-cutting exercise so that the NSW Department of Education can meet its requirement to cut $150 million for the O'Farrell government's budget constraints. It will devolve the burden of administrivia onto schools and divert principals from their roles as educational leaders. For a $50000 one-of grant, the Department of Education will transfer onto schools financial, governance, capital works and staffing tasks onto principals. Schools will have no independence in how they structure these tasks as they will be required to use the Learning Management Business Reform (LMBR) software. 

Public sector workers in the Department of Education have been warned of job-cuts as the Department devolves administrative tasks onto principals. The Daily Telegraph has reported that LMBR will result in schools losing the interest they earn on their bank accounts as finances are centralised within the Department. It has become clear that LMBR will be the tool by which the O'Farrell state government will implement the Boston Consulting Report cutting hundreds of millions of dollars out of the Department of Education.

Empowering Local Schools and Local Schools, Local Decisions will also harm the curriculum guarantee in rural and hard-to-staff public schools by undermining the teacher transfer system. Rural schools already struggle to attract qualified teachers, especially in Mathematics, Science and TAS. With 20 000 NSW public school teachers retiring in the next five years, further constraints on teacher transfers will exacerbate disadvantage in rural and hard-to-staff schools. Sources within the Department have said possible changes to the transfer system include allowing popular schools to block nominated transfers and the abolition of service transfers.

Schools can have no confidence in the LMBR software. Its first version was written off by the Department, was heavily criticised by the Auditor-General and is being redeveloped by a new software company. The Empowering Local Schools EOI sent to schools said that principals who participate in the first roll-out of LMBR will be "pioneers". In consultations with principal organisations the Department has admitted that it is working to an "aggressive" timeline to implement the software. LMBR will not be ready for schools when it is first rolled out and principals will instead be expected to fall back onto a lot of phone calls to the Finance Directorate and an increase in forms to complete.