Education department bungled oversight of millions
A damning report has found the Department of Education bungled efforts to oversee funding spending by schools in NSW, revealing there is no way for the department to track where the money is going.
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A damning report from a government watchdog has found the Department of Education has bungled efforts to oversee funding spending by schools in NSW, revealing there is no way for the department to track where the money is going.
The Auditor-General of NSW Margaret Crawford released a report on Wednesday following a review into the Education department’s support and supervision of planning and needs-based funding provided to schools under the Local Schools, Local Decisions reform.
The 2014 reform was implemented to allow schools more authority on how to use their allocated funding to best benefit their pupils, with $900 million in needs-based funding allocated in 2019 to support disadvantaged students.
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The Auditor General’s report revealed the Department of Education lacked “adequate oversight” in how the funding provided was being spent and there was “no effective mechanism” available to work out if the funding had helped schools or statewide at all.
“A significant amount of extra funding has been provided to schools over recent years in recognition of the additional learning needs of certain groups of students facing disadvantage,” the report said.
“However, multiple guidelines provided to schools contain inconsistent advice on how the community should be consulted, how funding could be used, and how impact should be reported … it is not clear how schools have used equity funding for the benefit of identified groups.”
“The department has not had adequate oversight of how schools are using needs-based equity funding to improve student outcomes.”
The report also stated the Education department had failed to set measures or targets for expected outcomes of the funding and had not told schools explicitly to report the outcomes of the funds being used.
“School annual reports we reviewed did not fully account for the equity funding received, nor adequately describe the impact of funding on student outcomes,” it said.
The Auditor-General gave the Department of Education several recommendations, including clarifying what the equity funding granted was for, measuring and reporting on impact on the school and students from the funding and providing more training in financial management for school management officials.
It comes as the NSW government announced on March 5 the Local Schools Local Decisions reform would be “finetuned”, announcing principals would have less administration work and spend more time “leading their schools and supporting their students”.