NSW Principals reject “school autonomy” push

Vanguard July 2012 p. 12
Nick G.

NSW public school principals met at the NSW Teachers Federation recently to discuss concerns about the O’Farrell government’s Local Schools, Local Decisions (LSLD) policy.

The large gathering of 250-300 principals was determined to oppose taking responsibility for school staffing budgets, or to “self-manage their own decline”, as NSWTF President Maurie Mulheron expressed it.

So-called “school autonomy” is part of the imperialist neoliberal mantra aimed at replacing public education with a fragmented educational market-place where schools compete for resources and enrolments.

Under the O’Farrell regime, there would only be two classifications of staff – principals and classroom teachers with no systemic allocation of other positions such as executive staff (deputies, assistant principals), coordinators, counselors or teacher librarians.  In an environment of declining financial support for schools, principals would have to make decisions about which staff to “purchase” for their schools.

Principals at the meeting expressed fears that class sizes would rise as staff-student ratios were no longer able to be protected in Awards and industrial agreements.  (The legislative prohibition against the NSW Industrial Relations Commission allowing any agreement on staffing ratios applies across the public sector and prevents award regulation of matters such as police authorized strength numbers, nurse to patient ratios, fire fighter and ambulance officer crew numbers per appliance.)

Whilst some principals welcome greater power over staff selection and curriculum content, as revealed earlier this year on an ABCTV Four Corners program, they are clearly resisting a different role that is being imposed ostensibly to provide them with greater authority at the local level.

Mark McConville, Principal at Toronto High, who featured in the Four Corners program extolling the virtues of giving more power to principals, told his colleagues at the NSWTF meeting, “We don’t want to be saddled with the staffing budget, with the potential for cost-shifting and cost-cutting, and we don’t want to go from making educational decisions to making financial decisions.”

There was an audible groan across the meeting hall when Mulheron quoted from a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report prepared for the NSW government on school-based employee costs that referred to the importance of “commercial and management capabilities” in the selection of principals and for “promoting commercial acumen amongst principals thereby improving the overall performance of schools”. 

AEU national president Angelo Gavrielatos emphasized the importance of forcing the Federal government to immediately implement the recommendations of the Gonski Report into the funding of Australian schools.  This was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address the inequities in the funding of private and public schools and to rescue public education from the decline that the unfair funding of private schools had forced on it.

With the NSW government unable to bribe or coerce principals into being its agents in the further decline of public education, and with NSW teachers determined to continue the struggle begun with the state-wide 2-hour stoppage last May, the stage is set for a major struggle that embraces rights at work with the great common good represented by a quality system of public education.