Millions spent on ‘emotional intelligence’ classes for NSW Education bosses

While teachers strike over pay, millions of dollars are being splashed on new-age lessons for NSW Education bosses.

Millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent to give NSW Education Department bureaucrats new-age lessons in “emotional intelligence” and “boutique executive coaching”, as well as audits of their “wellbeing”.

It comes as new figures show the NSW Department of Education has become top-heavy, with its corporate staffing ballooning by 51 per cent, while teacher numbers rose 5.5 per cent over the same three-year period.

Teacher shortages are being reported.

The NSW Department of Education has issued contracts for multiple consultancies, including $356,620 to Genos International, which runs emotional intelligence leadership training, $548,000 for a wellbeing services review by PricewaterhouseCoopers and $151,000 to ECI Partners to run boutique “executive pathways and coaching”.

The tenders also include another $177,000 for a “performance experience capability uplift”.

The Sydney-based providers of the emotional intelligence classes say “emotional intelligence is in the top 10 most required job skills for now and the future”.

NSW Teachers Federation President Angelo Gavrielatos. Picture: AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts

But NSW Teachers Federation president Angelo Gavrielatos says the “extraordinary” outlay by bureaucrats could be better spent on teachers and students.

“Millions of dollars are being spent on consultancy after consultancy after consultancy,” Mr Gavrielatos said.

“It leaves one to ponder – what is it that they do? The priorities are wrong.”

One Nation MP Mark Latham. Picture: Christian Gilles

One Nation MP Mark Latham, chair of the NSW parliamentary education committee, says the Education Department has been “buried in managerial theory” resulting in worsening school results.

Mr Latham has uncovered figures showing in the period from June 2017 to June 2020, staffing of state and regional offices increased by 51 per cent, compared with 5.5 per cent for teacher numbers.

“No one really knows what ‘emotional intelligence’ is, and this expensive course is another waste of money,” he said.

“I support a review of the wacky ‘wellbeing’ consultancies crawling all over schools (without an evidence base), like Shark vs Dolphin Thinking and the Resilience Doughnut, but haven’t they got enough corporate staff to do the review internally?

“Nothing justifies a 50 per cent increase in corporate staff when there’s a teacher shortage in NSW.”

Education authorities say the extra administrative staff were needed to support a “record number of new schools”, but Mr Latham says “they are not building any more new schools than they did 10 years ago”.

“They have existing staff and systems for new schools, so why the extra staffing?”

Education department spokeswoman Yvette Cachia said the increase in corporate staff was largely from the creation of School Infrastructure NSW to deliver the school building program.

“The department spends annually 0.03 per cent of its budget on consultants,” she said.

“The corporate workforce makes up less than six per cent of the overall workforce it supports.”

She said it was “appropriate” the department supplemented its internal expertise.