Responding to "Local Schools, Local Decisions"
Federation encourages members to respond to the Department of Education and Communities’ consultation paper on increased school based decision making – ‘Local Schools, Local Decisions’.
In addition, members in school workplaces are urged to endorse and send the statement in the Federation’s information guide – ‘Doing more in NSW public schools with less funding from government?’ The closing date for responses is 18 November, 2011.
Federation supports greater school based decision making, when and where it is demonstrable that this approach neither undermines nor diminishes
• equity and excellence for all students and schools,
• state-wide curriculum, resource and staffing guarantees,
• teachers’ employment rights and entitlements,
• the primacy of the principal’s role as educational leader.
Increased school based decision making should be motivated by the pursuit of genuine educational improvement, not government cost cutting.
Experience elsewhere shows that devolution is used to introduce local ‘hire and fire’ of teachers and replace permanency in teacher employment with limited tenure individual contracts.
Keira High School in Wollongong has a diverse staff, which has arrived after a variety of experiences ranging from first appointments from university, to incentive and service transfers. In the short video below, Keira HS teachers and the principal talk about the advantages of a statewide staffing / transfer system. In the longer, seventeen minute video below, we include more interviews from Keira as well as several teachers from schools in the far west of NSW.
Federation will oppose any attempt by government to use increased school based decision making as a cover for off-loading responsibility for properly resourcing and staffing public schools.
