 
Week 4 - Local School Management
|  | The Decentralised Management of Teaching Staff |
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Listing of Papers | |
MS SUE CRAVEN
Victoria, Australia
THE DECENTRALISED MANAGEMENT of teaching staff in state education systems has become a key concern, where there is a need to balance a desire by the local community to control who teaches their children with the need to maintain a system of state education which meets the needs of all children and remains within a fixed budget.
Decentralisation can mean the total devolution of teacher management to school boards or committees of management, who become the employer of teaching staff. There may be a lesser degree of devolution, where some systems retain the central employment of teachers, devolving only limited employment functions to the local level.
Teacher Management: A Key Concern
The issue of teacher management was identified by the Senate Employment, Education and Training References Committee as a key concern arising out of devolution of school management to the local level (Senate Committee: 1998). The Committee reported that the trend to school-based recruitment exacerbates the difficulty of filling positions in hard-to-staff schools, and leads to problems with predicting the supply and demand of teachers.
This trend has lead, in Tasmania, to the employment of student teachers, unqualified teachers and teachers with inappropriate qualifications when suitable teachers cannot be found. The problem is compounded when schools compete for staff in short supply. Well-resourced schools in middle class areas are better placed to attract a range of teachers and provide a diverse range of subjects than schools in disadvantaged areas, where curriculum choices are constrained by teacher availability. What are the issues around devolution of teacher management in decentralised education systems?
The Question of Short-Term Contracts
The Australian Education Union (Victorian Branch) ran a campaign, both before and after the Victorian state election, against the use of short-term contracts for teachers. The basis of the AEU complaint was that short-term contracts, which ran from term to term or for one school year only, denied teachers pay over the holiday period, unless they were able to gain another contract from Day 1 of the new term/year.
The AEU also claimed that short-term contracts were discouraging newly qualified teachers from entering the state education system, even at a time when David McRae, from Monash University, identified a looming teacher shortage of 1,200 secondary and 940 primary teachers in just four years time (McRae: 1999).
Decentralisation of teacher management may lead to less professional support for teachers, and the education system can become more dependent on teachers to deliver high quality classroom teaching, requiring them to be even more responsible and professional. In most decentralised systems, the central government has retained a role in setting standards, establishing levels of teacher qualification and providing funding to schools (Gaynor:1998). The Victorian system is no exception. The Department of Education, Employment and Training retains control over teacher qualifications and teaching standards.
Hiring and Firing in Brazil
Some overseas countries have found that devolution of teacher recruitment has lead to the politicisation of the process. For example, in Brazil teachers are hired and fired at the discretion of local politicians (Plank:1993). Teacher unions are lobbying for a return to centralised recruitment where this politicisation has become an issue. However, an OECD study in twelve countries has shown strong support for the involvement of local people in the hiring of teachers. School-level decision making was most strongly supported for teacher selection and promotion (Gaynor: 1998).
Rural Provision
Other factors which impact on devolved teacher management include the ability to staff schools in remote, isolated or rural areas. Personnel issues are a sensitive area in any decentralisation process (Gaynor:1998). Teachers' needs must be taken into account to ensure that they perform well in the classroom. In Zambia, teachers who refuse a rural posting may find themselves on leave without pay until a posting becomes available in the urban area in which they wish to work. In Pakistan, only candidates who come from a specific district can be appointed to schools in that district. In Sri Lanka responsibility for deploying teachers rests at the provincial level. As a result, some provinces have more teachers than they need, while others have too few. In Pakistan there is no national strategy to deploy teachers.
The Incentives Strategy
Providing incentives has been found to be more effective than coercing teachers to take up positions in remote or rural areas. Such incentives include hardship allowances, rent subsidies or housing, travel subsidies, special study leave or enhanced promotional prospects. Teachers are more likely to remain in a particular school if they have a choice of posting. The Victorian Government is currently investigating the feasibility of offering to pay higher education fees for graduate teachers who are prepared to take up positions in rural areas.
Teacher unions have expressed concern that the local management of staff may lead to decisions being made on a purely economic basis, without an appreciation of the complexities of teaching. Individual or local bias may also become the basis for teacher selection and management. Some education systems have tried to address these concerns by ensuring that selection and promotion are always merit-based, with appropriate appeal mechanisms to ensure that the merit principle is upheld.
Possibility of Curriculum Imbalance
Decentralised management may lead to curriculum imbalance, when a school community decides it no longer wants a particular subject to be taught at a school, or decides to add subjects to the curriculum. If the school has already employed teachers to the capacity of its budget, and none of the employed teachers are able to teach the desired subject, curriculum choices are limited. One response to this dilemma has been to appoint teachers for fixed terms or on short-term contracts, making it easier to choose teachers to meet changing curriculum needs. Declining school enrolments can also cause schools to have an excess number of teachers, and schools facing demographic changes choose to use short-term contracts to ensure they do not exceed budget provisions for teaching staff.
New Arrangements in Victoria
In early March 2000 the Victorian Government announced new arrangements for staffing government schools in Victoria. The new policy arose from concerns about the number of teachers who were being offered short-term contracts, the impact on teaching staff of short-term employment and the effect this was having on the Government's long term ability to staff Victorian state schools. The new Labor Government entered into an agreement with the education union, which reflected its pre-election commitment to minimise the use of short-term contracts for teaching staff. The key features of the agreement are that:
the standard mode of employment is to be ongoing except where the position is of a genuine fixed-term nature;
- all teaching vacancies will be open to qualified applicants, both within and external to the teaching service;
- existing local selection arrangements are to continue with the offer of ongoing employment to teachers currently employed for a fixed period in response to an advertised vacancy of longer than twelve months;
- introduction of compassionate transfer;
- excess staff to be managed at the local level through local redeployment; and,
- agreed retrenchment procedures where redeployment and other options such as retraining have been unsuccessful in placing excess staff after twelve months.
The agreement stated that employment was to be ongoing except to cover family leave where an appointment is made to replace a teacher who is absent for twelve months or less. A replacement teacher may also be employed until the teacher he/she is replacing returns from family leave. Appointments can not be ongoing if the principal believes that an excess staff situation will arise. This may include predicted enrolment decline, based on the Department's enrolment predictions. Teachers may be employed on a fixed-term where funding is available for a specified period of time to undertake a specific project, where no fully qualified teacher is available and a less than fully qualified teacher is employed, provided that such employment cannot extend beyond five years, and for any other approved reason. The school staffing office in the Department is available to provide advice on particular circumstances.
The Department of Education, Employment and Training claims that of 33,000 teachers employed in Victorian schools, 82% are currently employed on a permanent or ongoing basis, with 11% employed on a short-term basis to cover leave absences. The remaining 7% (approximately 2,300) of teaching staff are on short-term contracts, in situations where there is no guarantee of ongoing funding, where enrolments are declining and the future need for teachers is unclear and, in some instances, where school management has opted to use short-term contracts as a management tool. It is this latter category which the Government is seeking to minimise.
Five Per Cent Ceiling Recommended
A report by David McRae, commissioned by the Victorian Branch of the Australian Education Union, recommended that a limit of 5% of the workforce at any one time should be on short-term contracts, and no more than 10% in any one school. The report recommended that short-term contracts should only apply in situations where there is a genuine need for short-term replacement, such as leave absences (McRae:1999). Given the Departmental estimates of leave absences running at 11% at any time, the McRae figure of 5% appears to be unreasonably low.
The Department reported in early April 2000 that 350 teachers had been moved from short-term to ongoing employment as a result of the change in Government policy at that stage. When the new policy was launched in March 1 the Minister estimated that up to 2,000 contract teachers may be made ongoing. The Department has made it clear that staffing decisions remain the prerogative of the principal, within the context of government policy.
Finding the Correct Mix
The issue of staffing a centralised school system, within a policy framework of allowing school communities to have a greater say in the management of schools, provides challenges to education managers. The answer appears to be in finding the correct mix of permanent and fixed/short-term employment which will ensure that teaching remains an attractive profession, while education budgets are contained and school communities have an effective say in who teaches their children.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ms Sue Craven is employed as an Industrial Officer by the Victorian Principals Federation. She holds a Masters Degree in Social Policy and is currently completing a second Masters Degree in Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management at Monash University in Melbourne, Victoria.
Sue can be contacted by email at:
suecraven@hotmail.com
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REFERENCES
Department of Education, Employment and Training. (2000) Circular 36/2000 Teacher Staffing Arrangements. DEET, Melbourne.
Gaynor, C. (1998) Decentralization of Education Teacher Management. The World Bank, Washington.
McRae, D. (1999) Public Education in Victoria: Getting the Basics Right. Australian Education Union, Melbourne.
Plank, D. (1993) What Doesn't Work: Financing Basic Education in Brazil. Michigan state University, Michigan.
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