“… to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it …”
— George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949
Invoking Orwell’s notion of ‘doublethink’ to understand a recent announcement made by the Department of Education might appear heavy-handed, particularly in this era of Trumpian politics, social media and alternative facts.
But doublethinking was front-and-centre when the Department explained its proposal to cut 485 non-school based teaching positions. “The rationale for the shift is clear,” it said. “We need to keep reversing a decade of devolved support; we need to ensure school staff and leadership have the backing of better and scaled support services they can rely on.”
Cut support for schools in the name of “operational efficiencies”; ensure school staff and leadership have better support they can rely on. Two opinions, held simultaneously, cancelled out.
These cuts extend well beyond numbers on a spreadsheet and the qualified teachers who are passionate about their about-to-be ‘deleted’ jobs (another Orwellian gem). They penetrate deep into the quality of learning we can deliver to kids in the classroom.
Take the decision to cut the well-regarded Best in Class scheme, which currently involves more than 80 practising expert teachers. This includes the HSC Strategy program, which shares the most effective teaching methods and spreads excellence, lifting HSC results for students across all socioeconomic demographics and locations. That program will be killed off along with similar ones delivering high-quality, practical and relevant professional development.
Knowing this, the Department has the temerity to state there will be “no impact inside the school gates”.
Of course, the cuts will also shunt additional responsibilities onto already overburdened principals, and their executive and classroom teachers. Rather than “reversing a decade of devolved support”, the Department is using logic against logic by embracing Local Schools, Local Decisions methodology.
Rebuilding the system and transforming the workload of teachers demands three levels of critical activity: systemic structural reform, organisational leadership and regulation within the system, and local collective agency.
In striving to achieve systemic structural reforms, Federation has lobbied for increased schools funding, additional release time, the right to disconnect, and streamlining the demands of compliance.
In the context of systemic structural reform, senior officers of the Department have a fundamental responsibility to provide ongoing, explicit leadership, appropriate regulation, and central coordination of structural reform to ensure that there is a tangible and positive change in culture within and across the public school system.
The Department cannot do this without a vibrant and thriving non-school based service of qualified and expert teachers meeting the needs of our schools.
Achieving real cultural change and rebuilding the public education system demands that members work with Federation. Our call to action is to develop collective capacity to campaign for these necessary structural reforms, call out failures of the Department, and identify and address everyday issues, including local experiences of unsustainable teacher workloads.
Finally, as this journal goes to print, we are approaching the deadline given to the states by the Albanese Government to sign up to an inadequate schools funding deal. While the Department must own its decisions based on so-called “operational efficiencies”, the public provision of education will always be compromised for as long as it is underfunded against the Schooling Resource Standard. The only certainty as we go to print is that public school communities will judge the Albanese Government by the deal that is struck.
