The Federal Government has announced the first phase of the Empowering Local Schools initiative that will allow public schools to join together to form ‘confederations’ to allow greater integrated decision-making and community engagement.

 

The Federal Government will provide over $480 million over the next seven years to roll out the intiative, including $69 million in funding to roll the scheme out to 1000 schools in the next two years.

 

Under the program:

 

  • Schools will be able to form confederations to work together to achieve greater flexibility and make collective decisions. This could include shared staffing arrangements.
  • Regional and rural schools can join with schools in metropolitan areas to increase the curriculum options available to their students.
  • Small regional schools can join with other schools to form ‘centres of excellence’ in areas such as joint financial management.
  • Schools will be provided funding to change or improve their operations or service delivery in areas such as governance, school operations, maintenance and infrastructure, and workforce issues such as staff recruitment and performance. Schools taking part will consult with their local community, including parents, business and local government, about the changes they wish to make.
  • Schools will receive a grant of $40-50,000 to help implement changes.

 

More information on the initiative can be found here