The government will take back control of schools and reduce the power of principals, admitting it had lost its ability to intervene in classrooms and keep track of more than $1.25 billion in Gonski money.
Education Minister Sarah Mitchell on Friday said she was unhappy with the way Local Schools, Local Decisions (LSLD) reforms – introduced by the Coalition in 2012 to give public school principals more power over their own schools – were working.
"It is clear that changes are necessary to lift results," she said. "It is time to rebalance LSLD, giving greater ability for interventions in instances where schools are seeing particularly concerning outcomes for their students."
There should be several layers of accountability to ensure principals' decisions were focused on student outcomes, Ms Mitchell said, but "[that] cannot happen across the whole system while we have a policy that totally devolves decision-making power to each local school".
"Everyone should have accountability in the chain."
The acting president of the Secondary Principals Council, Craig Petersen, said he would welcome anything that reduced unnecessary red tape, but principals were already held accountable for their decisions.
"If there was a change in what that looks like, it needs to be carefully considered to ensure we are not adding another layer of accountability into a highly regulated system of education," he said.
"It should be supportive, not punitive. The assumption should be that you are doing your best, rather than assuming teachers are incompetent and principals don't know how to run schools."
The president of the NSW Teachers Federation, Angelo Gavrielatos, said the union warned the government about the consequences of LSLD when the policy was introduced.
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