Again I read with interest the article

"Victoria schools to have more autonomy under plan"

That

"PUPILS studying the same subject may be marked using different methods under sweeping changes planned for Victoria's public school system."

Very interested from my Victorian secondary colleagues of the implications of such a move and do they believe it will improve student outcomes. 

Not sure if a backlash so much as a horses for courses thing. Queensland and Western Australia occupy large parts of Australia geographically, but the spread and size of schools is different.   In Queensland there are over 1200 state schools spread across the state and several hundred of these are one or  two/three/four/five teacher schools – very small with teaching principals and of course composite classes as there are not enough students and hence teacher to have a teacher per year level.  As with many things knowing some history can assist understanding of the current situation and newspaper articles.

Perhaps 14 or so years ago there was a LNP (by another name) government that introduced a not dissimilar concept called Leading Schools.  It was divisive and there was industrial action.

Yes there will be an election soon in Queensland so that is a foreground to the reporting and comments.

There  are many Queensland principals who would welcome self determination and autonomy BUT many of them are in the green, leafy, big city suburbs where attraction of staff is not as much of a consideration as sifting for quality.  Currently there is a transfer system that works for staffing Queensland's remote and rural schools with high quality teachers.  This is the dilemma for many that unless there is very significant variation in the amount of funding to employ teachers via a remote and rural monetary incentive then they are hesitant to forfeit the surety of the current transfer system.

Perhaps something to cross post to the Remote and Rural Group to ask how they would view the balance between autonomy and systemic support.

Thank you Chesleigh.  I agree, unless incentives are provided there will be difficulties staffing more remote schools in less attractive situations.  Teachers are making quality of life decisions.  The danger is that you create a tiered system of government schools with those unable to attract quality staff becoming residual in nature.  What I like about staffing and my situation as an Independent School in WA is that I get people applying for a position in the College who want to be here and who ascribe to our culture and ethos.  For example we advertised 4 middle school positions and had 370 applicants.  We were able to select 'top gun' teachers from around Australia which has further invigorated the culture of excellence we are promoting in the College.