The fundamental policy of the NSW O'Farrell Government is to subsidise the corporate sector through multi-billion dollar cuts to public services. The NSW Department of Education and Communities (NSWDEC), which consists public schools and TAFE, has suffered massive cuts undermining the learning opportunities of over one million students. Both of the O'Farrell Government's budgets have demonstrated this policy. September 2011 saw a budget cut of $150 million from the NSW Department of Education and Communities through so-called "efficiency measures" while handing a $300 million poker machine tax break to clubs. The 2012 state budget cut $1.6 billion from the NSWDEC while handing $1.8 billion to private road contractors.
Background
The cuts to NSW Public Education began with the previous Labor Government. The then Director-General of the Department of Education Michael Coutts-Trotter (now the Director-General of the Department of Finance) commissioned the Boston Consulting Paper. It outlined how the state government could cut $750 million in recurrent funding from public schools through closures and amalgamations, increases in class sizes and the abolition of thousands of teaching positions.
The Boston Consulting Paper was political advice to the state government as to how it could cut public school funding whilst minimising public opposition. Instead of announcing the full degree of budget cuts, savings could be hidden within policies of "flexibility", "school autonomy/devolution" and "principal sovereignty". The Boston Consulting Paper reported that the 47 Schools Trial and the Illawarra Trial of the School-based Learning Program (now called Every Student, Every School) could be used to make tens of millions of dollars of savings by abolishing school staffing entitlements. During the first trial phase of these policies schools would be allowed to keep local budget savings to build political support for the policies. Unfortunately, the NSW media (especially newspaper columnists) fell for this approach without any critical questioning of the government. Once the policies were to be rolled out state-wide, all school-based savings would be returned to state treasury.
The 47 Schools Trial
The 47 Schools Trial was the means by which the O'Farrell Government has sold the Local Schools, Local Decisions (LSLD) school devolution policy. It gave principals increased control over some staffing and budgetary decsions and allowed them to keep local budget savings. One of the possibilities under the trial (and LSLD) was that school leadership vacancies could be abolished to fund the employment of any type of personnel such as business administrators, sports coaches or speech pathologists. This has led to students losing access to curriculum and welfare expertise. Principals have been forced to make these cuts as the O'Farrell government has cut hundreds of expert teaching positions from the Department of Education. Worse still, schools are now being asked to cannabalise teaching positions to fund welfare jobs after the O'Farrell Government's $2 billion cut to the Department of Community Services.
Now that the trial has ended, all of the local school savings have been clawed back to treasury, leaving the trial schools worse off than before their participation in the trial.
Every Student, Every School
Every Student, Every School (ESES) is how the O'Farrell Government is implementing state treasury's demand to reduce the funding to public school special education programs. This reform was first identified by the Boston Consulting Paper as a means to implement the Victorian model of special education funding where costs were first capped, then reduced over time. This has been achieved by replacing the funding of students with diagnosed low-level autism and mental health disorders with funding schools according to the population incidence. This intentionally ignores the concentration of these needs in public schools where the incidence of these disorders is higher than the population rate and tends to clump around public schools in low-SES and regional communities.
Similar to Local Schools, Local Decisions, ESES was first trialed in schools (Illawarra and South-East) with additional funding attached. Now that ESES has been rolled out state-wide funding has been capped and schools are losing teacher aid positions.
ESES has also led to the replacement of specialised teachers with generalists. Instead of special education teachers with Masters degrees specialisng in fields such as autism or behaviour disorders, teachers now only have to complete a short online course covering all disorders. The loss of specialist teachers from public schools is the biggest setback to special education in a generation.
Local Schools, Local Decisions
Local Schools, Local Decisions (LSLD) has allowed the O'Farrell Government to save hundreds of millions of dollars into the future by abolishing the staffing entitlement of NSW public schools. Under the old staffing entitlement, public schools were guaranteed a set number of classroom, specialist and executive teachers based on the number of students and other socio-economic factors.
Instead, public schools now receive a so-called "bucket of money" to cover their local staffing costs. This "bucket" has no enforceable guarantee (as existed under the old staffing entitlement) to keep up with the rising costs of school staffing budgets. Now that principals are to control 70% of money spent in schools, they will be expected to identify savings if school budgets do not keep up with salary costs. Even worse, future state government cuts to public education will be easier now that the Minister will be able to transfer the blame to principals for budget cuts in each public school. The NSW Commission of Audit has recommended that the state government remove class size limits potentially saving billions of dollars.
LSLD was first identified as a cost-cutting program by the NSWDEC when it offered public school teachers an additional 1% salary increase above the 2.5% wages cap (equivalent to $180 million) if the Teachers Federation "signed-up" to LSLD. According to the NSW's state wages policy, any salary increase above 2.5% has to be funded through cost-saving measures. The union refused to agree to such a deal as it came at the expense of public school students.
The NSW Treasurer Mike Baird confirmed the cost-cutting agenda of LSLD during the September 2011 state budget when he said that LSLD was a budgetary reform. The result of LSLD is that budgetary power over schools has shifted from the Department of Education to Treasury.
On May 30 2012 the NSWDEC announced the abolition of 200 jobs from its state office as part of the LSLD reforms. Cuts were made to:
- curriculum support;
- teacher professional learning;
- regional English as a Second Language support;
- the Drug Prevention Unit;
- student welfare;
- the Arts Unit;
- equity programs.
On September 11 2012 the Minister of Education Adrian Piccoli announced 400 school administrative jobs would be cut. These jobs would go as a result of the first roll out of the software system called Learning Management and Business Reform (LMBR) which underpins LSLD. It was later revealed by the retired Director of Finance of the NSWDEC Ken Dixon that a further 1200 school administrative jobs would be cut as the LMBR software is rolled out state-wide.
Next week I will outline the full extent of the O'Farrell Government's cuts to public education announced in September 2012.
