By Noel Towell
Public school principals’ jobs have been radically reshaped by the demands of a competitive and punitive funding system, according to a new study.
School leaders told researchers they feel more like grant appliers and fundraisers than educators as they fight over government money for their schools in competitive tendering processes.
A new study says school principals feel more like “grant appliers” than educators.Credit: Stocksy
The study, by Deakin University and the Australian Catholic University academics, comes as the federal government and the states are locked in a stand-off over schools funding.
Researchers Emma Rowe and Sarah Langman interviewed 18 school principals – half of them in Victoria – over five months last year and were told schools were entering competitive tenders to fund “rudimentary or fundamental resources” like school repairs or student wellbeing programs.
One interstate principal told the academics that schools were hiring professional grant writers to gain a competitive edge in the struggle for departmental grants.
The federal Labor government has put aside a funding boost worth $3.5 billion to Victoria’s public schools over the next 10 years, but the state government – and most of the other states and territories – has baulked at the Commonwealth’s demand for the spending to be matched.
Time is running out to resolve the impasse before a deadline of the end of September, set by federal Education Minister Jason Clare, for the states to accept the Commonwealth’s offer or to continue to run their schools at existing funding levels.
But Rowe, an internationally recognised academic expert in education policy, told The Age on Monday that she was shocked at how the interviews – originally intended to be about philanthropy in public schools – had laid bare the funding realities on the ground.
Principals said they had to find time to write complex and time-consuming applications for grant money from the Education Department under programs like the School Shade Sails Fund, the Inclusive Schools Fund or the Minor Capital Works Fund.
“It was quite shocking to talk to so many principals and find out how much of their time this was occupying and that it was so demanding,” Rowe said.
“Funding is competitive, and it’s from the government, and they’re competing with other public schools for this funding, so it’s quite depressing.”
Victorian schools enjoy a high level of financial autonomy compared to their interstate peers, with much of the decision-making devolved to principals working with school councils.
But the researchers found that the state’s operating model forced principals far beyond the traditional norms of their jobs as educators as they battled for funds to keep their schools afloat.
Victoria’s Education Minister, Ben Carroll, said on Monday that the state’s public schools would continue to be underfunded, by about $1000 per student, unless the Commonwealth improved the offer it had made to the states.
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