Schools to have more control over budgets and staffing

Oh wait I mis-read the article, it is Labor in Australia not Labour in New Zealand.

SCHOOLS will get greater control over their budgets, selecting and employing teachers and identifying funding priorities, under a new Labor policy.

Julia Gillard, campaigning in the western Sydney seat of Lindsay, announced the empowering local schools program, which she said would give principals and parents in participating schools a bigger say in how they are run.

The Prime Minister said the new policy, to begin in 2012 with 1000 schools participating, would allow some schools to hire specialist teachers and support officers for areas of need identified by the local school community.

The program will initially be targeted at government schools but will be rolled out nationally by 2018 at a cost of $484 million.

The ALP have it absolutely right: it’s amazing how backwards Labour here are. They would never support this in a million years.

“A key element of this reform is empowering local school communities to make decisions about what is best for their schools and their students rather than a centralised system run by state bureaucracies dictating staffing mix and resource allocations,” Ms Gillard said.

Ms Gillard said the government would also work with non-government school authorities to identify how they could improve school performance through local decision-making.

Under the new program, new school governance arrangements would be set up including giving school councils or boards responsibility for strategic planning and overseeing school operations and finances.

Principals in participating schools would also be able to determine their appropriate staffing mix.

Could you even imagine the teacher’s union letting this happen in New Zealand. They are still bent out of shape over the simple task of sharing information about pupil achievement, let alone ever forgetting the success of bulk funding which they opposed with every breathe they had.

Labour are getting their collective tits in a tangle over who own and maintains a building, I can’t see them adopting sensible policies like this. Then again they are too busy shooting each others feet off out of spite, so any coherent policy initiatives are unlikely to be forth-coming anytime soon.