Indigenous schools get autonomy as principals are given control

REMOTE indigenous schools will be run by directors with autonomy to spend money and hire staff.

REMOTE indigenous schools will be integrated with health and community services and run by directors with autonomy to spend money and hire staff, under a radical restructure intended to boost student standards and transform troubled communities.

In a discussion paper to be released in coming weeks, the NSW government outlines a new approach to indigenous education in the state that will initially involve about 15 of the lowest-performing schools.

Under the plan, principals - called directors - will be responsible for integrating other services into the schools, including early childhood, vocational education and training, health and welfare initiatives, to place the schools at the centre of the community.

Teaching positions will be thrown open, with new positions found for those wishing to leave. New teachers will be hired on merit, with the directors able to offer higher pay or extra incentives.

The directors will be responsible for ensuring community involvement in the schools. Each school will have an advisory group of community members and indigenous elders.

While the model resembles that taken in Victoria and Western Australia with its Independent Public Schools, the NSW schools will still be governed by the department.

NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli emphasised that the program was not intended as an alternative to existing school arrangements but was developed specifically for these schools.

Mr Piccoli said the strategy had been developed over the past 18 months, before the Coalition assumed government, in consultation with principal associations, the NSW Teachers Federation and the Aboriginal Education Consultative Group.

The strategy echoes some of the changes showing early success in remote communities in the Northern Territory, with school directors responsible for the entire education cycle from working with mothers before birth to early childhood, school to Year 12 and into further training and jobs.

Some of the options envisaged in the plan are for schools to stay open longer to allow the community to use the facilities, offer adult education classes, host a health clinic, school nurse or baby and maternal health services.

Mr Piccoli said the government would not run all 15 schools in the same way but allow them to develop their own solutions to the specific needs of their community, which could result in 15 models.

The program, called Connected Communities, will be overseen by an executive director who answers to the director-general and has the authority to bypass usual departmental procedure and red tape.

"No longer can we continue to operate schools in communities of concern the same way we have in the past. It is time for a rethink and for bold action," the discussion paper says. "The intent of the Community Connections strategy is to reconceptualise the way we deliver education, training and related services in our most vulnerable communities."

The government expects to deliver the changes within existing budgets received by the schools, which will be selected on the basis of academic performance and other social factors. Some smaller schools already receive $1 million in extra funding.

"It's not a lack of money," Mr Piccoli said. "If money was the solution, this problem would have been solved 20 or 30 years ago."