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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-11-11 Daily Xml
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School Principals

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (15:17): I rise today to highlight some concerns that I have about the appointment of principals in our local schools around the state and across the peninsula. We are undoubtedly quite lucky in Narungga—and possibly more so than quite a few other regional electorates—to have extremely high-quality local schools. Many of them have tremendous and generous grounds, and all of them have valued and engaged staff.

Unfortunately, though, there have been two examples of poor selection of principals relatively recently that have resulted in significant damage being done to those school communities. On both occasions, a much-valued local candidate was overlooked in favour of an import who has not quite worked out. I intend to share these examples with this house, not in an attempt to critique the person who was ultimately appointed, but because I sincerely think that there need to be changes to the process to prevent this from happening again.

As I understand it, the current appointment process is conducted by a three-person panel. It features a member of the school governing council, a member of the school staff and the education director of our district. As I understand it, those three people work together to assess applications, interview those applicants and then to appoint a person to that position.

The first of these two examples that I want to share occurred at Central Yorke School when local principal, Grant Keleher, left in 2020 for another opportunity and his deputy, Scott Moore, was the local pick to replace him. Grant had been responsible for some tremendous work in growing the school and fostering its identity after its 2017 amalgamation with Point Pearce, and the community had hoped that Scott would continue that work and continue to grow the school. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Scott was overlooked and a new principal was brought in from Whyalla, bringing with her a number of staff from her previous school and an attitude from there as well.

The community geared up to give her a chance. They were keen to see the school continue to succeed, and while Scott left for another opportunity elsewhere, we waited with bated breath to see how it would work out. Unfortunately, the school deteriorated rapidly. Something like eight or 10 local staff departed through choice, or otherwise, and there was a complete breakdown in the school's relationship with parents. The damage has been significant. We now have an excellent new principal, having recently joined, Rob Jeffries, and hopefully it can recover soon. Thankfully also, Scott Moore has not been lost to our region and he is now taking stewardship of the Port Broughton Area School. But there was significant damage done because of the local candidate being overlooked.

The second instance has happened only in the past week or so and has been the subject of significant media attention. Wallaroo Mines Primary, which is actually in Kadina, is a school of 80 or 90 kids and it needed a new principal. Amongst the applicants was a beloved former principal who had performed the role to the immense satisfaction of the school community for a number of years before having a brief hiatus in the head office and who had expressed a desire to return. There was also another candidate from a school on Eyre Peninsula. Somehow the candidate from the EP won the contest and started at the beginning of term 3.

Well, I regret to inform that we are now halfway through term 4 and she has essentially been placed on leave pending an investigation on a number of allegations. I do not intend to litigate those allegations here as I am sure they will be properly investigated, but I do want to thank all the community members who have shared their concerns with me, particularly Lorrin, Nicole, Cassandra, Billie and Jordyn, who all visited my office last week to share their concerns. I just cannot understand how a former principal who had performed the role to such acclaim, and who had been promoted by the very same department to a higher leadership position recently and who wanted to return to that school, could be overlooked. I shared my concerns with the government way back in June about the process resulting in that outcome.

So there we now have two examples of valued, experienced local candidates being overlooked in favour of other candidates who have had to be removed from office relatively soon after taking over. Granted, this does not always happen and I should now highlight a couple who have done extraordinarily well. We have new principals who started relatively recently at Yorketown and at Kadina who have come from different regions and are doing an outstanding job in their community. They ought to be congratulated on the work they have done.

But the fact that this has happened twice in the past five years, with quite disastrous results, is enough in my view to ask whether something needs to change. I am proposing one change to the process subject to the answer to my question from question time today. We need confirmation that an aspirant principal will have their disciplinary record and other internal education department documents compulsorily shared with the selection panel.

I have been told by some community members that not all members of the selection panel for the Wallaroo Mines Primary decision were aware of the complaints that had been formally made by members of the school community at that aspirant principal's recent school stops. I have seen the online petition and I am wary of taking everything written online as true, but if some of them are, then I am sure the committee that considered whether to appoint might well have made a different decision. I look forward to the minister's answer to my question today, and if there are opportunities for improvement to the process then I look forward to seeing them implemented in due course.

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