As we look at some of the more immediate
issues for Australia and South Australia it becomes clear that we may expect
to see a continuance of the kinds of educational policy currently in place.
This section lists a few key ongoing policy
matters that will continue to shape the work of the Principal and argues
that there is unlikely to be any significant policy shift in the near future.
The tensions and difficulties that Principals experience will not dramatically
alter. This raises a strategic and ethical question that must be answered
before any industrial negotiations occur.
1. Some likely trends.
At home, demographics will continue to place strains on the public school
system - less children particularly in some parts of the city and country,
a continued drift to private schools as more low cost small schools are
funded in working class suburbs and more religious and cultural groups
are able to get funding to start their own, a continuation of population
shift from country to the city. As long as there is a policy of large schools
as the major means of ensuring curriculum variety then there will be problems.
Parents' commitment to giving their own children market advantage expressed
in subject and school choice will continue to eat away at non instrumental
areas of the curriculum and create the rationale for further school specialisations.
Professional commitment to individualise learning, to move from whole class
to small groups and from pedagogic lecture to teacher -mentor will continue
to place pressure on current secondary school structures of time, space,
and people. Whether we see more American style reforms, such as small schools
and schools within schools, authentic assessment projects, higher order
thinking pedagogies and integrated curricula, may well depend on a change
in government. The challenge is in finding ways to utilise the major strength
of the system - its intellectual capital and huge pool of expertise and
resources - and possibly the new technologies, to meet the ongoing demand
for choice and individualised and specialist programmes.
South Australia's particular economic base
will mean continued exposure to any difficulties experienced by our major
export markets - in our case, Asia - ongoing slow decline of manufacturing
operating under the threat of the impact of tariff reduction, and the continued
severance of wealth creation from employment. What results is an ever widening
gap between the rich and poor, a gap that has a strong locational base.
As long as parent contribution and external fundraising and sponsorship
are necessary for schools to operate a basic programme, and with the ongoing
threat of the withdrawal of poverty based equity funding, we face the possibility
of a two tier system of public schools. While it is likely that a change
in government would see some increased commitment to alleviating family
hardship and to supporting the public services that are located in the
areas of high urban and rural poverty, there is little reason to suspect
that this will be any more than safety net provision as is envisaged in
the new Education Action zones policy of New Labor in the United Kingdom,
which has maintained a schools funding policy based around private contribution.
It has not opted for a more holistic view of social cohesion and a civil
society that would make questions of social and educational inequality
not just a matter for the minority. In the United States the Clinton administration
has supported recent experiments with integrated community services to
support children's learning, but the evaluation literature is divided about
whether these are thinly disguised policing of the poor or a move to support
community development.
The impending retirement of many teachers
provides the opportunity for a restructuring of the workforce -options
such as a core of permanent staff and periphery of contract staff model,
and/or a model of fewer more highly paid teachers and more para-professional
staff will undoubtedly be attractive cost saving measures to a resources
stretched state. There is also an opportunity for the established profession
to become more involved in preservice education and induction of the new
generation of teachers as universities begin to expand and renovate teacher
education.
The fraught questions surrounding decentralisation
are unlikely to go away. Information from international and other Australian
experiences is increasingly available to us. Options such as the United
States 'charter schools' and the United Kingdom's 'opting out' are extreme
policy measures, as is a fully fledged voucher system, although each has
their local boosters. The shape of devolution depends strongly on state
government preparedness to take drastic action. This is not the history
of our state where 'softer' approaches to policy are more usually the case.
Whether decentralisation is technical, managerial, highly regulated and
adds to inequity or whether it fosters local democratically decided educational
reforms is the issue, and it is the issue regardless of whether the shift
is dramatic or gradual.
In all OECD countries we see the continuation
of the test - data - outcome - report card driven approach to education
policy. While it may be extensively criticised, there is little sign of
change. Data creates the rationale for government policy intervention and
as long as the dominant view of economic recovery is dependent on a "floor"
of training for the potential and actual labour force, then governments
will want to retain tight policy control of schools and universities. Testing
and data collection is in its infancy in Australia and we might reasonably
expect to see decisions to intensify the practice. The issue may well be
then how much energy we decide to expend on ensuring that the data is a
realistic picture of what schools and students can do.
2. The pragmatic approach?
It is clear from the above that the current tensions around increases in
managerial work, handling increased pressure from the community, increased
public scrutiny, increased accountability, inadequate resources, and increasing
contradictions between reform literature and government policy approaches,
are unlikely to go away ( these issues are outlined in Section D). They
may change shape if there is a change in government at state or federal
level. There may be some loosening of regulation - for example or a decrease
in petty rules and paperwork as the new technology platforms are integrated
and improved. But in general, the Principals' job will continue to require
long hours and large amounts of managerial tasks and responsibilities.
This raises a major strategic question for Principals.
- If the educational reform efforts of Principals
are not explicitly recognised and rewarded
- If the current policy is to reward managerial and technical tasks
- If some of those tasks might be better retained centrally or done by
a specialised officer under the supervision of the Principal
- If the job and person description fails to recognise the diversity of
demands that are required in different locations
- If current regulatory frameworks increase the work load and make the
work of the school itself more difficult, then
Is a demand for remuneration for current unacceptable practices a tacit
acceptance of the situation?
Is it possible to have a position of accepting money for things that you
then intend to change - would this then mean accepting a pay decrease if
they changed?
Is it sensible to refuse remuneration for tasks that must be and are done,
even if they are not our preferred way of doing things?
Pragmatics dictate that refusing money for
work that is actually done is foolish. However, what tends to be the result
is that until there is a major shift in macro government policy, further
incremental demands will build on the present agreements and arrangements.
Principals therefore need to be clear about their bottom line - things
that are absolutely unacceptable - and continue to present critique and
alternative options, modifications and adaptations to policy prescriptions.