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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1865 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

As I have said in previous debates, a great deal of very sensitive flexibility has to be allowed in this area, and perhaps some better reporting back to the Assembly or reporting back to the parent-teacher community will help people in their ups and downs. The fear with this is that, even if you get school-based management working for one year, due to circumstances like the principal's absence or difficulties within the school, they may have bad patches and good patches. So, it is not something that I think we can just push away and say, "Right, schools; you have got it. Get on with it and manage as best you can". I take the spirit of the paper to be in accord with those requirements, and I urge the Minister to maintain dialogue with us all to reassure both the schools that are concerned and members of the Assembly that their issues are being taken seriously.

The interesting element of school-based management is the one that claims:

The principles under which ... [school-based management] has been developed incorporate equity considerations. The principles are as follows:

Improved outcomes for students: increased decision making and resource management enhances the school's flexibility to develop, improve and adapt curriculum.

... ... ...

The one that is the most hotly contested by people who are concerned about school-based management is how we measure, how we know, that improved outcomes for students are an inevitable consequence of school-based management and how, in fact, all this increased flexibility does help. Many teachers and principals are now finding themselves being administrators and fundraisers, coordinators and managers, rather than educators. There is an inevitable drift away from the focus on teachers and principals being teachers and principals and actually imparting quality education to their students and a drift towards more and more requirements for good administration skills, which are not necessarily useful in producing good education outcomes. So, I think that remains a central area of concern.

I can understand that, in the principles of trying to manage for fairness, accountability, community involvement and transparency, we can eventually monitor all of those and see them; but I think a great deal more thought and perhaps concern have to be investigated and dealt with for the improved outcomes for students. It is not absolutely clear how improving the flexibility of administration and the management of funds in the school is necessarily going to have any better outcome for students. It may be that some school communities think that painting walls, maintaining very high standards of cleanliness and mowing lawns frequently have some educational benefit. There will be others who think that, ignoring all of that, letting the cleaners come in only once a month, not mowing the lawns and buying more computers is the way to improve student outcomes. I understand the notion of leaving schools to make those choices; but it does not necessarily produce a uniform improvement in outcomes.

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