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Education power transfer - lessons from Victoria

Matthew Carney reported this story on Monday, March 12, 2012 18:38:00

MARK COLVIN: The New South Wales Government has announced what it's calling the most far-reaching reforms for the state's schools in a century. The Premier, Barry O'Farrell, has transferred more power to school principals in a bid to lift student performance.

Victoria handed more control over staffing and budgets to its principals more than 20 years ago. Dr Ben Jensen, education director at the Grattan Institute, told Matthew Carney about the merits of the Victorian experience.

BEN JENSEN: Well I think it has an underlying rationale that if we give school principals the responsibility for the performance of a school, then we need to give them the same power then to take actions that will affect that performance. So they need the power to be able to determine what happens in their school if they're going to be held accountable for the performance of the school.

MATTHEW CARNEY: And what have the results shown so far with the Victorian experience?

BEN JENSEN: Well I think if you look at Victoria and around the world actually, there's not a huge amount of evidence that says school autonomy has a great impact on student learning because it's really not the end game. It's a process to improve teaching and learning in classrooms. But what is very clear is that it is favoured by school principals.

We see that not only in Victoria but also in Western Australia where their schemes are incredibly popular with schools trying to get more independence and more power within the school.

MATTHEW CARNEY: But what about - specific studies obviously must have been done on principal autonomy, what do they say?

BEN JENSEN: They say - there are some studies, I think the international assessments show that there is some benefits to increasing autonomy and that has it on student learning. We see that in some of the OECD work. But overall what we see is that it's very hard to identify the connection between autonomy and student performance.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So if the link isn't that clear - so why is there a push in this country to go towards that direction?

BEN JENSEN: There's no doubt in my mind that school autonomy is a good thing. That it's important for school principals and schools to have the power to make decisions that affect learning in their school.

But where I do have concerns is when people take schools autonomy as the end game, as though it's the final result, when really it's just a stepping stone to improving teaching and learning in the classroom.

MATTHEW CARNEY: So what other factors have to be in place to lift performance?

BEN JENSEN: Well what we would really see is that we have to consider how to improve teaching and learning in the classroom. And that's really about how do we improve teaching.

So it's getting the right push and pull in the classroom to improve learning. That's all about increasing the development of teachers, increasing - improving the education and training they receive, and improving the constant support to improve teachers in the classroom.

MATTHEW CARNEY: And if you don't have these systems in place then introducing school autonomy will have little impact?

BEN JENSEN: Well I think it can have a positive bounce, there's no doubt about that. I think there's a lot of strength in the New South Wales education system, the framework of the system; and they will get some improvements around school autonomy. But unless they then take the next step to improve teaching in the classroom, then we're really just pushing around the edges to be honest.

MARK COLVIN: The Grattan Institute's education director, Dr Ben Jensen, speaking to, Matthew Carney.


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  • An Australian classroom
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