States will decide school autonomy

Peter Garrett says the rollout of ‘Local Empowered Schools’ initiative will vary across jurisdictions.  A thousand schools across Australia will have more control over hiring and firing staff, their budget and even school hours from next year, under the federal government’s Empowering Local Schools initiative. 

He said there were currently varying levels of autonomy already happening across Australia and one example might be the setting up of a board, made up of parents and local citizens, who could determine things like the length of the academic day or year and participate in making proposals about staff professional development. “What we're really saying is that it makes sense to give principals and school communities more say over what happens at their school locally. We're providing the financial commitment to do that.”  The Australian Education Union has previously expressed concerns from teachers about principals having increased power to hire and fire staff.