Ms O’CONNOR question to MINISTER for EDUCATION, Ms PALMER
Your department is advertising for multiple executive leaders. Are they to lead these multi-school organisations? If not, what roles are they to fulfil? We know about the pilot grouping of New Town, Risdon Vale, and Moonah Primary schools. What other school groupings are these recruitments potentially for, and what other schools do you expect to roll into the MSO model next year?
ANSWER
Mr President, the member might have to remind me of those questions. With regard to schools going into it next year, there are three schools. They are the only schools that are part of the trial for next year. Evaluation starts straight away. Then the following year we look at the next step, which could be a new MSO, an MSO 2, and then what schools could possibly be added into those families. So, that is in answer to the first question – just those three schools for next year with evaluation on it starting straight up front.
With regard to the role of the two new executive leads, we have advertised for the role of CEO. That position will report to the Secretary, who is responsible for the strategic direction, operational development, and overall performance of the MSO. That will also provide direct line management to our school principals. Staff will continue to be employed and managed according to existing frameworks, and this certainly is not about corporatising the education system. This is a senior executive leadership position with significant operational autonomy and high accountability for learner performance improvement and stakeholder engagement.
Now, a teaching requirement is considered an essential requirement for that CEO. Then the other role you’re talking about is the Head of Operations role. The Head of Operations reports to the CEO, and they will be responsible for leading the optimisation of resource use, including finance, human and physical resources, compliance, communication and risk management.
The Head of Operations is responsible for designing and delivering that operational backbone of the family of schools, the MSO school. The teachers and the school can have an absolute clear focus on delivering and teaching without all of that admin that we have placed on the shoulders of teachers and principals, which they are constantly saying is the biggest issue that they face in schools. They want to have one-on-one engagement with students. They don’t want to be sitting in offices writing risk assessments and all the admin that we have put on their shoulders over time. It’s taking all of that responsibility out, sitting it with the executive lead. For the first MSO, we will have these two positions.
Ms O’Connor – By way of interjection, my understanding is that there have been multiple roles advertised by the Department for Education, Children and Young People (DECYP) for executive leads.
Ms PALMER – As part of the trial, we’re not saying, ‘If you’re not in the MSO, those three schools, you’re out – you’ve got nothing to do with it’. Rather, we are listening to feedback from teachers, principals and unions about teacher workload. We’re saying, ‘What can we be doing in that space as part of the MSO trial that will manage some of these significant issues that we have?’ We are losing teachers and principals, because we’re not managing their workload.
Schools that are not part of the MSO will be grouped together into 11 proposed groupings, and that will happen in 2026. Schools have been consulted on the groupings, and their feedback has actually helped to refine that model. Now, each one of those groupings will have an executive lead who will be responsible for performance and improvement of student outcomes within that grouping. The role will provide strategic direction, operational oversight and professional supports to principals.
When I talk about that really tight alignment that we will see in a family of schools in MSO 1, I believe a great way of describing it is that close alignment, that tight alignment across teaching operations curriculum – that dial will be up to eight in an MSO. In a grouping, it might be about a three. That will be part of the evaluation as we go through. Are the groupings of schools working so well in setting them up for possible inclusion in an MSO? If they want more and a tighter alignment, we will be able to give that to them. I believe they’re the positions that you’re talking about.
