Education Department Western Australia

ALP puts limits on principal power

The plan endorsed by state and territory education ministers about a week ago outlines a "continuum of autonomy" offering a range of options from low to high. The initial rollout next year of the empowering local schools program, which was a Gillard government election commitment, will focus on granting schools more autonomy in three areas: staffing, funding and governance.

The plan steps back from a proposal put to ministers last December that schools operate like independent schools and self-governing schools become the norm.

But that push went further than the original election commitment Julia Gillard made, which was to empower schools by giving principals and parents a greater say in selecting and employing teachers, and identifying funding priorities.

A paper prepared for education ministers says the continuum recognises that the level of school autonomy varies widely from state to state, and between the government and non-government sectors.

"The empowering local schools initiative recognises that increasing school autonomy is not a 'one-size-fits-all' proposition," it says.

"Individual education authorities would determine the point at which their schools are currently placed along the autonomy continuum to express the starting point for increasing their school autonomy. This point . . . will be different for each education authority."

The program starts next year with 500 government schools, followed by 500 non-government schools in 2013. The details of the extent of autonomy granted will be worked out in national partnership agreements between the commonwealth and each state, territory and non-government school authority.

In a low-autonomy model, schools determine the profile of staff they require within a systemic framework, funding

is allocated centrally for specified expenditure and the education department appoints the principal.

In a high autonomy model, the principal selects teachers "on merit, appoints and terminates all staff", manages a single-line budget of untied funds as well as the capital works spending, and the school board or council is given statutory authority for overseeing the school, and appoints and can dismiss the principal.

Giving greater control to schools and principals would also avoid a repeat of the problems associated with the $16.2bn Building the Education Revolution program. NSW and Victoria, which managed the program centrally, paid inflated prices for buildings of lower quality than many non-government schools, where principals controlled the projects.

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