Not a level playing field
CONTENTS

Chapter 1

The changing landscape

The 1989 Hobart Declaration which produced the National Goals of Schooling set in train a major series of initiatives within Australia's public education systems. Eight key learning areas were identified and the State and Territory governments embarked on a rigorous program of development of curriculum frameworks. At the same time as the curriculum was being defined and refined within the eight Key Learning Areas, major changes were occurring outside schools which would have a great impact on schools and their communities. First, there has been a very rapid expansion in technology. The previous commonwealth government policies saw a rapid increase in the retention rates of students through to year 12 with the establishment in the post-compulsory years of vocational education and training opportunities in schools. the youth market was also shrinking rapidly.

Suddenly there were many more young people in education and training than at any time in Australia's history. Higher retention rates meant that secondary schools were having to cater for greater numbers and a greater diversity of students, with more students destined both for university and for TAFE. Technological developments were impacting upon the work of schools and teachers. Technology provided access to vast amounts of information with computers becoming a regular feature in children's homes and lives, and impacting increasingly upon the delivery of curriculum.

Along with these changes came a reconceptualising of the role and responsibility of governments in the support and delivery of services, including schools. These changes are broadly captured in the language of policy by the terms rationalisation, user-pays, core values and functions, outsourcing, devolution and the like. Before proceeding to a brief description of the main types of fundraising activities undertaken by schools, it is important to explore some of the themes which have set the tone for recent developments.

The first theme is based in a policy discourse which affirms competition and choice as core policy values. According to this view, the achievement of best practice, productivity, efficiency and measurable outcomes requires the operation of a competitive market place of services in which the consumers of those services exercise choice. In the education context, this means that schools should be encouraged to compete with one another to attract both students and community support. The rhetoric is that the under-performing school will be forced to lift its game, not only benefiting its local students and families, but contributing to the overall standard of education in the system.

Such a policy framework is based on a reconceptualisation of education. Instead of it being regarded primarily as a public good for which government has a fundamental responsibility, it is viewed increasingly as a product or service whose distribution is governed by market principles (such as choice and price), and whose modification will be in response to the demands of the education consumer. A deep engagement by governments in the practice of education is replaced by a more shallow one.

A second theme is that of greatly enhanced devolution of authority for key functions away from central bureaucracies to the agencies which deliver government services locally. This is part of governments' desire to reduce administration costs and to locate decision-making as close as possible to the people who implement, or are affected by, the decision. For government schools, this means that a range of matters which were previously administered or managed at a systems level, now have to be dealt with at the local level. These matters range from maintenance of grounds and buildings to staffing and curriculum.

This has resulted in a realignment of the formal relationships between schools and their local communities, and changes to the roles of principals and teachers. At the same time, other major changes have impacted heavily on the work of principals in particular. These include the new enterprise bargaining arrangements, the Hilmer reforms to competition policy and revised Commonwealth-state financial relations.

With the package of responsibilities devolved to the schools has come a responsibility that was largely unexpected. This was the responsibility of raising a significant proportion of the school's non-salary operating costs. Fund raising is now one of the several important new tasks that principals are expected to carry out in addition to their traditional role as the educational leader of a school.

The role of principals now extends beyond ensuring the quality of the curriculum, the learning, the teaching, the care and the welfare of the children in their schools. They must now regard themselves as business executives. Schools are large enterprises in themselves. They have large staff, large budgets and high expectations from the community. Education departments expect principals to be enterprising; to be looking for new and better ways to do everything; to be committed to continuous improvement and change for the better. [1]

A third important theme is that of partnerships between schools and their communitiesnotably parents and the business community. Parents have always been connected with schools, but have traditionally remained `on the outside` involved in supporting the school through voluntary work in canteens, fund raising events, coaching sports and so on.

Increasingly, parents have become more formally involved in schools. With the devolution of authority to schools, school boards and P&C associations have become very important. School boards in particular have significant authority and responsibility, and parents now find themselves at the centre of school planning, development and management rather than at the periphery.

Demographic differences in the education levels, experience and socio-economic status of a schools' parent communities will have a significant bearing upon how effectively parents fulfil their prescribed roles in the new arrangements. Given the expectations on parents to make a major contribution to the planning and funding of school curricula, this has the potential to result in significant disparities between schools.

In short, the concept of parents working in partnership with schools has altered considerably. It no longer refers just to the kind of support parents give in the home to their children's learning, or to their involvement in voluntary work within the school. Parents are now expected to shoulder much more responsibility for the resourcing of a school's program. School budgets now require an explicit quantity of funding to be raised- as voluntary contributions, from P&C fundraising activity or the levying of subject fees and charges. The amounts can range from a few thousand dollars to many tens of thousands.

Under these circumstances, the pressures put on both schools and parents and the school-parent partnership are significant. They call into question the extent to which governments are abrogating their responsibilities to provide adequate resources for schools. The devolution of authority and responsibility to schools and school councils without a commensurate level of funds with which to exercise those responsibilities is a questionable strategy.

Partnerships with business have become increasingly important for schools. While this may have once been a fairly loose association, largely for the purposes of providing work experience opportunities for senior students, the connections between schools and local industry and commerce have intensified. Schools are having to develop much more sophisticated career education programs, and vocational education has become much more significant as students remain longer at school. As a result, schools are seeking more formal, structured and integrated relationships with businesses which can provide not only the workplace experience but also technological and financial resources being demanded by a diverse curriculum, by students, and by their parents.

In an increasingly competitive market, businesses are keen to take advantage of special relationships with other groups in the community both to secure and enhance their own position, and to develop their role as corporate citizens. Large firms in particular put significant efforts into long term marketing strategies; they know the importance of niche markets and brand allegiances. Schools are attractive in this regard.

All of these features of the contemporary education landscape mean that schools are busy with a range of activities other than what goes on inside a classroom. As the classroom reaches out into the worldwhether through the local community or through cyberspacemany of the former boundaries, certainties and orthodoxies fall away. Schools themselves are increasingly regarded as just one more enterprise in a network of interconnecting enterprisesboth public and private.

The implications of these new interactions between school and business require careful thinking through. There are many benefits to be enjoyed by students through a meaningful association with potential employers and through the experience of the workplace. Firms, too, derive satisfaction and status from their involvement with schools. But there are also a range of dilemmas which arise. These dilemmas are both ethical and practical. Negotiations between a school and a business may be a legal minefield. Many principals, for example, may not appreciate the potential liability attaching to verbal agreements or understandings. There are ethical issues surrounding the motivations for business involvement in schools, and the perceptions which are created within the community arising from that relationship. Ties with a particular business may have repercussions upon other groups within the community. What consideration should a principal give to the potential inequities which may emerge when their school is favoured by commercial interest, and nearby schools are not? These are all issues which require careful consideration.

The following chapters explore the main issues which emerged from the evidence presented to the Committee during the course of its inquiry. Each can be traced back to the changes described earlier, which present government school systems with unprecedented challenges in the funding, structure and administration of schools. It is both the magnitude and rapidity of change which has placed particular stresses on education systems. At the individual school level, teachers, parents and principals have responded with vigour, but with increasing exhaustion, to the demands being placed on them. There is a sense of crisis in many public schools, as they strive to meet the goals set by governments, and deliver educational services in a manner consistent with prevailing views about market-responsiveness, choice and autonomy. Some of the more cynical observers have pointed out that central offices have devolved to schools all those aspects of delivering education which have the potential to become sites of dispute amongst school communities, while reserving to themselves the more arcane aspects of policy development, advice to ministers and systems evaluation.

There is much that is valued by principals, in particular, in an increasingly decentralised environment. Autonomy and flexibility are prized characteristics within any profession. In the Committee's view, however, these cannot be exercised properly when the professionals involved are excessively concerned with securing an adequate level of resources to enable them to implement their decisions and carry out their tasks. This concern lies at the heart of the Committee's deliberations about the private and commercial funding of government schools.

Types of fundraising

The four common forms of fundraising mechanisms used by schools and parents and friends organisations are:

• voluntary contributions (a contribution to the general support of a school which parents are invited to pay)
• subject levies (which parents are asked to pay to defray certain costs associated with particular subjects)
• sponsorships (an arrangement with a business or corporation involving the negotiated provision of funds, goods or services to schools in exchange for advertising or publicity or other mutual benefit)
• marketing/commercial arrangements (sale, lease or hire of school resources or intellectual property)
• giving school councils the right to borrow from banks and other lending institutions. A further mechanism is that of giving school councils the right to borrow from banks and other lending institutions.

This appears most advanced in Victoria where the government has established working parties (under the title of Schools of the Third Millennium) to look at three specific areas: innovative multimedia, autonomous schools and quality management in the education system. The Minister for Education, Mr Gude, recently signalled that granting schools more autonomy could involve giving school councils the power to borrow money for expansion. This would appear to involve changes to the legal status of school councils and the removal of current restrictions on the ability of school councils to enter into long-term financial arrangements.

The Committee found considerable diversity across Australia in the terms used to describe the various forms of fundraising. For instance, most States and Territories use the words voluntary contributions to describe payments parents are asked to contribute on a voluntary basis for general purposes, that is non-specified. New South Wales, however, refers to them as general schools contributions. It is difficult to determine whether Tasmania's 'discretionary levies' equate with voluntary contributions in other States and Territories. Levies are described variously as secondary school subject contributions, materials and services charges, required levies, subject levies and fees. The Committee notes and strongly supports the trend away from the use of the word 'fees' but considers whatever terms are used they should indicate the nature of the charge and in particular, whether the charge is voluntary or compulsory. It would assist families which move interstate, policy developers and researchers if the States and Territories used consistent terminology to describe charges and other forms of fundraising.