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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-07-23 Daily Xml
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SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE SELECTION PROCESS FOR THE PRINCIPAL AT THE ELIZABETH VALE PRIMARY SCHOOL

The Hon. R.P. WORTLEY (16:10): I move:

That the select committee's report be noted.

The select committee was established to investigate affairs at Elizabeth Vale Primary School following many complaints from some members of the school community and subsequently a great deal of media coverage in the first part of 2006. This revolved around the fact that the previous school principal was not reappointed to the principal's position and was unsuccessful following an appeal. The committee examined the selection and appeal processes and the parts played by the individuals and organisations involved and received a wide range of written submissions and heard verbal evidence.

We also received a broad span of other relevant information which went far beyond the selection and appeal processes in this case and which pointed to a number of underlying issues that needed to be explored and fully understood. This meant that some considerable time has elapsed since the establishment of the committee and the production of this report. However, these important matters are now recognised, and we have included in the final section of the report the pertinent questions which we believe led to the problems in the first place.

The select committee met on 19 occasions. Following its appointment the select committee placed advertisements in relevant media publications advising of its appointment and inviting submissions and evidence, and it commenced hearing evidence shortly afterwards. In total, the select committee heard evidence from 20 witnesses, with several presenting evidence on more than one occasion, and some witnesses presenting evidence in camera. The committee also received a total of 34 major submissions, including several that were granted confidential status by the committee. The committee also made two site visits to the Elizabeth Vale Primary School.

Submissions and evidence varied in the extent to which all terms of reference were addressed. A wide range of people have expressed their views, including current and former staff at Elizabeth Vale Primary School, officers of the Department of Education and Children's Services and members of the school community. The select committee members note and appreciate the efforts made by all parties in order to present their views.

I opposed this committee to start off with. I think we should be a bit more selective in the issues we should refer to a select committee, but I must say I was very pleased with the way the select committee handled the whole process. This select committee did what select committees should do, and that was search for the truth, and all members of the committee, whom I will name in a while, worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that the report reflected the real issues around this select committee.

I thank my colleagues who served on the select committee: the Hons Mr Dawkins, Mr Finnigan, Ms Schaefer and Ms Bressington and also for a short time the Hon. Nick Xenophon. It was a great pleasure to work with all of them. I also thank the executive officer of the committee Mr Chris Schwarz and the research officer, Ms Carol Bradley, whose work was vital to the final drafting of the report.

The Hon. J.S.L. DAWKINS (16:13): I rise to support the motion, and I note the comments of the Hon. Mr Wortley, who chaired the committee throughout its quite long period of existence, probably longer than we all thought would have been needed when we started this inquiry in the early part of 2006. I think the honourable member has referred to the events that took place at Elizabeth Vale over the summer of that year. They coincided with an election campaign, and I think the media and others highlighted a situation which got considerable attention throughout the media both locally and across the state.

I do agree with the Hon. Mr Wortley: I think the select committee has worked pretty well to go over the wide range of issues that I think were in play at Elizabeth Vale in the time leading up to the unrest at the school. We did have a look at the after effects of that under the acting principal and, of course, more recently, under the new permanent principal, Mr Grant Small. Members of the committee have been to the school on two occasions and seen the way in which the school seems to be running now, and we are very pleased about that. We hope that the finalisation of this committee report will allow the school and its community to move on in the furtherance of education in that area.

The committee looked at a number of factors in this whole situation. We looked at the period in which Ms O'Connor was the principal of the school. There was a period where it seemed that she had the full confidence of most of the community and certainly most of the senior people in the Department of Education and Children's Services. This was despite the fact that the methods of teaching were, while not described by educators as completely unorthodox, not applicable for all curriculum or all schools. Certainly, they related somewhat to the decision to allow years 8 and 9 classes to be conducted at what is normally a primary school.

The matters we looked at were probably what happened in between the times when the department seemed to be quite happy with Ms O'Connor's stewardship in relation to her own performance, her management of staff and management of finances, to a time when suddenly they did not seem to be happy with her any longer. To me, there was a lack of communication in all of that, in that when she needed to be reaffirmed or a new principal appointed there was a 12-month rollover on that situation. I am still yet to be convinced as to the reasons for that.

Ultimately, at the end of that 12-month rollover there was a selection process and Ms 'Connor was not successful, and not successful on appeal. I questioned very strongly—and I still do not think I got a decent answer—as to why the selection process in that period was delayed right to the end of that 12-month rollover.

I must say that in all of my determinations on this issue, and I think all of us examined this pretty keenly, whenever I looked at the reasons why there seemed to be this lack of communication or lack of indication to the principal that the department was no longer happy with her in a range of different areas, to me it seemed that the district office was largely at fault, but not solely. There were probably other areas in DECS that could have communicated that, but to my mind I think it was the district director who was to some extent asleep at the wheel in relation to this matter.

I am very keen that the department should make sure that those who are directors of these districts, or any other administrative region within the Department of Education and Children's Services, has a much tighter and stronger level of communication with their principals in the range of schools that they look after. I have a strong belief that this select committee would not have been in existence if the district director had been stronger in that role.

On that subject, I note that the South Australian Secondary Principals Association—and I know this is not principally a secondary school, but I think this applies across education—recently indicated that the introduction of the common regions across South Australia, and that includes various parts of Adelaide, provides an opportunity to reshape the focus of the regions towards educational leadership, rather than the creation of many administrative bureaucracies. I hope that that is the case. Even though I think that these regions will be larger, I would hope that the way in which the directors, and perhaps assistant directors, operate is to avoid the situation that we have had in Elizabeth Vale.

There are a number of findings and conclusions that the committee has made, and I thank members of the committee for the work they have put into this. As I say, I extend my best wishes to the Elizabeth Vale community. It has been a divisive issue, but I think, from our visits to the school, that it seems, largely, to be getting better, and I would hope that that continues. I extend my thanks to all those who were witnesses before our committee, and those who put in other submissions. I thank our secretary, Mr Chris Schwarz, for his valiant and dedicated work on behalf of the committee, the research officer, Carol Bradley, and all members of the committee for their work on this matter.

The Hon. A. BRESSINGTON (16:22): I would also like to make a few comments about my experience on the Elizabeth Vale select committee. I was reluctant to sit on that committee at first, but I am glad I did now. It was an experience for me, as it was my first select committee. I also thank the staff and other members who worked on the committee. I think that the approach of this committee was a very balanced one. It was a confusing committee to start with, considering the information we were receiving but, as time went by, a bigger picture began to emerge. I think that the report handed down by the committee is probably the fairest report that we could have come up with. It took into consideration all the evidence we received from the witnesses from both sides.

The one thing I stress—and it is part of the report—is that I believe that the education department should have been a lot more responsible and a lot more proactive in intervening when it looked like things were going pear-shaped at Elizabeth Vale. That basically gets to another issue that we are seeing emerge more often here and that is the skill of government ministers in managing conflict resolution. If we could improve on that in this place over time, I believe that it would save taxpayers a lot of money and members of the community a lot of angst when they are facing these sorts of situations. We should have departments working proactively in the best interests of all stakeholders, which I guess is an idealistic approach, but it was my main concern that this was allowed to go on for quite some time.

I thank the other members of the committee for their patience with me at certain times. As I said, it was a learning experience and, like the Hon. Russell Wortley, I hope that this now brings closure to this matter.

The Hon. C.V. SCHAEFER (16:25): I, too, thank our secretary, Mr Chris Schwartz, and our research officer, Carol Bradley, and the other members of the committee. This has been a somewhat difficult committee inasmuch as it involved two polarised sides and two polarised sets of opinions as to what had caused the complete breakdown of authority within the Elizabeth Vale Primary School.

The other members have outlined some of the causes as they see it, and I certainly do not disagree with them. In spite of some of the press, I think this is quite a balanced report, but I do draw members' attention to some of the wording in our report. In term of reference (a), we said that our committee:

...was unable to find evidence of misconduct of any Department of Education and Children's Services employee or officer...

That does not mean for my part that I do not suspect any, because at best the behaviour of the department in its highest echelons—and, in particular, the district director—was below that which I think any employee can reasonably expect from the person who is their direct superior.

Ms Lisa-Jane O'Connor was principal of Elizabeth Vale Primary School for five years, during which time she published papers which were lauded within this state, interstate and overseas as being about a new and cutting-edge system of education. She was then asked to be the acting principal while her position was advertised. If any of us put ourselves into that position (into Lisa-Jane O'Connor's shoes), it would be reasonable to expect, given that she had received no criticism, that she would be reappointed to her position.

So, I do not think that anyone could have been more surprised than Lisa-Jane O'Connor when she was not reappointed. During that time, the district director exchanged numerous e-mails with her (many copies of which we saw). He agreed to be her referee and yet, behind the scenes, he was recommending that she was unsuitable to be reappointed. At another stage in our report, we say:

...it appeared that because she had never been put on notice for poor performance, she had not fully recognised her failings. It is probable that she expected to be successful in her application, as none of the departmental officers had made clear that, given the school's poor performance in a number of different areas, her future as an educator was uncertain and she was unlikely to be selected. Neither was she given appropriate counselling to help her improve her performance.

In other words, the departmental officers (her superiors) let her and that school spin out of control for five years without giving her any warning that she was indeed for the chop. We heard quite lengthy evidence to suggest that the school's finances were out of control. Yet, on questioning, senior departmental officers said that they had no system which could flag the finances of a school, no system which could indicate to them that the school owed money, and no system of auditing that school. If that is the fact, the whole education system needs an overhaul because there are many small schools out there and, if they are receiving no genuine training, they could find themselves in the same position as did Lisa-Jane O'Connor and her school council.

We were told that discipline had spun out of control, and certainly some of the anecdotal evidence we received would indicate that even in an area of low socioeconomics, an area where there are known problems, that school had more problems and fewer methods of coping with them than any of its nearby peers, yet no-one counselled Lisa-Jane O'Connor as to where she was going wrong. No-one counselled her school council as to where it was going wrong.

Literacy and numeracy test results were lower than for peers in similar areas and of similar socioeconomic background. Comparably they were some of the lowest in the state, yet no-one raised a flag or any concern with Lisa-Jane O'Connor for six years, because she was allowed to be her own replacement until someone else was found. She would have had every reason to believe that she was doing quite a good job, that she would be reappointed to her position, only to find that that was not the case.

Certainly there was ample evidence that the school was performing poorly and evidence now to suggest that the school has been turned around, that the new principal, Mr Grant Small, has done an outstanding job and we are seeing an entirely different culture and attitude within the school. Having said that, many of the people who were devotees of Lisa-Jane O'Connor and her somewhat laissez-faire method of teaching have moved to other schools and we assume have found places that better suit their particular culture.

There is no doubt that the school was in deep trouble, but my criticism is directly with her district director, whose job it should have been as her immediate superior to have at least warned her that her performance was not only below par but unacceptable. Instead, he agreed to be one of her referees. I have criticism of him and of his superiors, who sat in and told us that there is no system whereby they can tell that the finances of a school are out of control, no system where they can go in and investigate complaints by numerous junior teachers, and no system where they can intervene if a school's discipline is out of control. If that is the case, our concern should be not just for Lisa-Jane O'Connor or the Elizabeth Vale Primary School but we should be looking at the whole upper structure of the education department.

We have brought down the best report we could under the circumstances. By the time we had finished we were looking back in history. The whole ghastly situation had gone on way too long and most of the students and staff who remained at that school had moved on, so we were looking at something of the past. I have no evidence that the structure and culture within the upper echelons of the education department that allowed this school to get into such a parlous state, and allowed a teacher who had the best will to be cast on the scrapheap with no counselling or advice, has improved. I thank my colleagues who were part of the committee and the staff. We probably did the best job we could with a difficult situation.

Motion carried.

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