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.