Thousands of assistants and deputy principals ordered back into the classroom

More than 4000 teachers including deputy and assistant principals will be forced back into the classroom as the Minns government reverses one of the Coalition’s major education policies.

An army of more than 4,000 teachers who walked from their jobs into highly-paid back office roles such as assistant and deputy principal as part of the ill-fated “local schools, local decisions” policy will be forced back to class.

The non-teaching tasks schools have been performing will also be audited to determine what ones can be scrapped or reduced to free up more teaching hours, while recruitment of teachers to non-teaching executive roles will be paused.

In one of the Minns government’s most significant school overhauls, the Coalition local schools, local decisions policy will be unwound as part of a broader plan to rein in costs and plug critical classroom teacher shortages.

The Department of Education will also re-inherit a greater share of the administrative burden that schools have been forced to carry.

Prue Car and Chris Minns are winding back the Coalition’s local school’s policy. Photo by: NCA Newswire /Gaye Gerard

Introduced in 2012, the policy led to billions of dollars shifted from the Department of Education to schools which were also given greater autonomy to make their own decisions.

However, a review by the Minns government found it instead led to an explosion of non-teaching executive roles as teachers were pulled out of the classroom to perform a growing list of new, administrative tasks.

As schools became “mini-departments”, the army of executive staff grew as they tackled support learning, HR, finance and other administrative duties outside of the classroom.

In the more than 10 years up to 2023, the government analysis shows the number of executive teachers – principals, deputy principals, assistant principals and head teachers – soared by more than 4,000 to a total of 15,000, an almost 40 per cent increase.

Deputy and assistant principal positions grew the most over that time, rising by 85 per cent and 62 per cent. As these positions grew, the number of classroom teachers flatlined while education outcomes went backwards.

The latest teacher vacancy figures show there remains a shortage of about 1800 staff – down from the 3000 or so at the height of the teaching crisis.

While some of the executive positions included some teaching hours, a government source said it varied from a day or two in front of a class to none. About 77 per cent of public primary school deputy principals did not teach timetabled classes, with 40 per cent of high school deputies also having no teaching allocation.

Another 42 per cent of high school deputies only taught between half a day to a day every week.

The Minns government does not blame principals for the debacle, with one source declaring they were left to their own devices with little direction and a growing burden of tasks.

Just how often executive teachers will have to teach is yet to be determined, but Education Minister Prue Car said the focus will be to support principals while encouraging the best teachers back into the classroom.

“Our focus is to get costs under control, teachers back in the classroom, lift standards,” she said.

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