Principals allowed to sack teachers

School principals will be given greater power to sack underperforming teachers under reforms announced by the Napthine government.

VICTORIAN school principals will be given greater power to sack underperforming teachers under reforms announced by the Napthine government.

The move was slammed by the teachers' union, which has applied to the Federal Court to challenge other measures in the broad reform plan.

Western Australia is the only state where principals have comparable autonomy over the hiring and firing of state school teachers.

Australian Education Union Victorian president Meredith Peace said the department and government were abrogating responsibility as the employers of teachers in giving powers to principals. "Principals are obviously involved in these processes, but the decision should reside with the employer. Giving principals these powers leaves the process open to inconsistency," she said.

"When we're talking about dismissing someone from their job, it's extremely important that processes are fair and consistent."

The AEU yesterday announced it had lodged an application in the Federal Court alleging breaches of the Fair Work Act by the government over its announcement it would impose targets that could mean up to 40 per cent of school staff would not meet required standards.

"It's ironic that they talk about autonomy and giving principals greater autonomy given they're giving the impression [with the targets] that they don't trust principals' judgment about the perfomance of their staff," Ms Peace said.

A spokeswoman for the Minister for the Teaching Profession, Peter Hall, said the move wasn't about increasing dismissals of teachers. "However, teachers have a responsibility to their students and a consistent inability to perform, while rare, has a lasting and damaging effect on students," she said.

A Department of Education and Early Childhood Development spokeswoman downplayed the move to grant principals dismissal powers as a "process change". "At the moment the power to dismiss teachers for having repeatedly failed to discharge their duties in the manner expected at their level rests with the secretary of the Education Department," she said.

"But in Victorian schools, principals have responsibility for performance and development of their staff. We believe it makes sense for them also to be able to make employment decisions where there are cases of long-term unsatisfactory performance.

"As is currently the case, unsatisfactory performance procedures would only be applied when an employee had not been doing their job as expected and when repeated efforts to support improvement had not succeeded."