Western Australia’s peak union body, UnionsWA, has used results of a Curtin University study to reinforce its criticism of the WA Government’s Independent Public Schools (IPS) initiative.

 

According to UnionsWA, the report, written by Dr Scott Fitzgerald and Professor Al Rainnie of  Curtin Graduate School of Business, provides evidence that self-managing schools open the way for greater privatisation of the education system, increase the workload of education staff, undermine teaching by increasing administration, and most importantly, do not improve overall student learning outcomes.

 

The report examines the implementation of policies similar to IPS in other states and overseas, showing “that there is no convincing evidence that the implementation of policies similar to IPS have led to significant improvements in student outcomes. Rather, in many cases they have actually reduced the standard of education delivery and threatened the equity of student outcomes within, and between, schools by reinforcing social disadvantage.”

 

UnionsWA says that the evidence suggests that ‘greater school autonomy’ is often code for government cost-cutting, as was recently revealed in a leaked Boston Consulting Group report to the NSW Department of Education.

 

Professor Rainnie says the policy is not new. “The concept of self-managing schools has been around for a number of decades during which time extensive research has shown no overall improvement in student learning outcomes and in fact a deterioration in student results in a number of places.”

 

“The policy is part of a trend to push more of the risk for education outcomes onto school communities and families, and is in line with the Barnett Government’s stated intention to be a facilitator of services rather than a service provider.”

 

UnionsWA Secretary Simone McGurk said unions held serious concerns for education staff and for student learning outcomes as a result of the policy.

 

“This policy opens up the way for the privatisation of key aspects of our public schools. The report shows that policies such as IPS increase negative competition between schools which are then forced to find cost savings to try and compete. We’ve seen it before, the first jobs to go are school cleaners and gardeners and this has disastrous results for the school community as a whole with other staff, including teachers, left to pick up the slack.”

 

“When you undermine the people responsible for the education of our children, you undermine learning outcomes. This simply isn’t good enough. WA is a wealthy state – we can afford to give our kids the best possible education.”

 

“We’re very concerned that this is being sold to the WA public as an innovative new policy that will improve our education system when in fact it is nothing of the sort. It is a cynical attempt to absolve the government of responsibility for public education and to cut costs.”

 

Unios WA has called on the Premier and the Education Minister to immediately stop the further roll out of IPS until a full, independent, public review has been undertaken into the impact it will have on the state’s education system.