Putting Students First
Background
On May 30, the Department of Education and Communities (DEC) – without warning, without consultation, and in the absence of even the pretence of negotiation – announced, as part of Local Schools Local Decisions, a radical restructuring of the Department. This amounts to the most severe and significant loss of teaching and allied support positions from Head Office in the history of public education. The cuts are deep and go to almost every aspect of support for schools and their students.
So far, the areas hit include
- the loss of the curriculum directorate,
- the abolition of positions currently supporting new teachers,
- the abandonment of the regional New Arrivals English as a Second Language (ESL) program,
- the closure of the Drug Prevention Unit,
- the loss of professional learning support
- loss of a range of other critical programs in student welfare, the Arts Unit and library services.
- Abolition of the the Equity Programs Directorate, which coordinated funding and support for low socio-economic status, disadvantaged schools.
In the state budget, the Treasurer announced the abolition of the equivalent of 10,000 permanent positions, on top of 5,000 already announced.
Because many people who currently work to support schools will lose their jobs, there will be a massive increase in principal and teacher administrative workload which will adversely affect the provision of quality education for students.
A Labour Expense Cap of 1.2% has also been introduced across the whole of government and Directors-General of all departments must now reduce the permanent workforce. TAFE teachers and school support staff will be the first affected.
Local Schools Local Decisions (and allied policies such as Every Student, Every School), is a mechanism designed by Treasury to force the Director-General to achieve the ‘efficiency savings’.
The DEC intends to use this structure to turn teaching into a casual rather than permanent job. In the DEC evaluation of the 47 School Trial it was revealed that 171 permanent teacher positions were filled by casuals. That is an average of 3.6 per school. If multiplied across the system this could result in the loss of 8000 permanent teaching positions.
The concern of the profession is that the quality of education for our students will be undermined.
On Tuesday 23rd October Adrian Piccoli chose Ultimo TAFE college as the venue to formally announce the NSW Government’s response to the recent COAG agreement on vocational education and training. Instead of developing protections around public provision, the state government will be following the same failed experiment of ‘market reform’ that has seen the public TAFE system in Victoria decimated.
The backdrop to the announcement is the $1.7 billion cuts to public education which followed the $54 million reduction in training announced in the June budget. The same state government that announced the perversely titled “Smart and Skilled” policy is cutting 800 jobs in TAFE. Course delivery is being ‘rationalised’, which in effect is resulting in the cutting of courses and positions from TAFE NSW.
