Forced School Mergers in Victoria
The Victorian Labour Government loves claiming that they don’t close schools, that they leave it up to the School communities (and more to the point) the School Councils to decide the fate of there schools! For those of you that have been through the process know, that although there is elements of truth to the story, the part of the story the forget to tell is that they have made the decisions behind the scenes and do everything in there power to make sure the out comes that they want are achieved and that the School Councils are the ones the when left with out any other decision, have to do the actual vote to close the school and therefor wear the blame (and thats what the government and education department do, blame the school council) for the rest of time, with the Government trying to wash their hands of the issue and remain clean so that they can bash the Liberal party and Jeff Kennett about the number of schools they closed.
Now I know some schools are probably redundant and that money can be spent better on one bigger school rather then two small schools, but my argument and goal is to have the State Government and the Education department to live up too their responsibility and own the decision to have schools close or merge (notice I didn’t say to make the decision? That’s because there already making the decision, they are just hiding behind the school councils to own the decision).
Now your school might not have been involved in a school merger and you might say, why do I care. With all the extra work and discussions that are taking place, it has to be more expensive to try to have the school councils talked/forced in to the decision then it is to just make the decision and live with the political backlash that might come!
So I will write more on the site in the coming weeks (assuming that there isn’t an about face by the government) but in the mean time, if you have been through the Building Futures program and been part of a school that has merged because of it and you have some stories to tell about the tactics and the process, either leave a comment below or email me at mollyfud@gmail.com.
Lets see if we can get the Government to come clean and be strong on an issue for once, instead of spending there time commenting on TV shows and Celebrities as they seem to be at the present time!
Our school council stood against the merger proposal and remained a united front – we survived. However, if there was no coercion as the government continually states in the media, then it should have no objection to giving its principals and school council members permission to be interviewed by reviewers and for that information to be made public. Faulty and out of date statistics were presented to school council. There was no backup information of the background to the statistics presented. The public should be made aware of the innuendo made that the school would receive nothing if it didn’t close and of discussions held with principals because they weren’t able to convince their school council. Did similar discussions take place with principals of schools who had made the decision to close to ensure that the decision was based on sound information? Schools were not provided with appropriate and balanced information to support the decision making process. It appears that DEECD staff relied on school councils not having a research or university level background. What was really interesting is that when I asked the project worker what research these decisions were based on, he said none, we don’t have time. Meetings to discuss the merger never discussed the issues, the causes or the various and alternate possibilities to move education forward in our area. There was never a holistic look at the situation. One of the schools that is being forced to merge in our area wasn’t even in the initial discussions to merge. They were brought into it at the last minute and I believe rail-roaded into it. DEECD staff didn’t care which schools went as long as it was left with only two in the area. No planning, no consideration of the demographics etc, no socio-ecological consideration of the needs of the children in this area, no answers for how the DEECD will better provide for children alienated from the system, no genuine consideration of the needs of children with disability such as autism, no consideration of the new housing area that will house a large number of families, no consideration of the transport issues of families in some of the poorest areas of our region who do not have access to transport. None of this upholds the government’s cross government and Fairer Victoria policies. DHS and families will be picking up the pieces for this decision for many generations to come.
Hi Kate,
Thanks for sharing your story. I agree that School councils are really not the ones that should be making the decisions and if the Department wasn’t having to waste money trying to convince schools Councils that there schools need to merge, perhaps they could spend it more wisely making the right decisions in the first place!