Performance Development for School Administrative Support Staff – December 2015

Performance Development and Review for SAS Staff for 2016

Performance Development and Review (PDR) is a public sector-wide initiative by the NSW Government to be introduced into all schools in 2016.

Currently in NSW schools, performance management is implemented when an employee is having difficulty undertaking their role. Performance Development and Review is about development and training, as well as about performance management.

Correspondence from the Department on PDR

The Department has provided the PSA with a proposal outlining how they want to implement the PDR process in schools. The document, Implementation of Performance and Development of non-teaching staff in schools can be viewed HERE

It was provided to the PSA at a Joint Consultative Committee (JCC) meeting. The Department has also supplied a draft Performance and Development Plan for non-teaching staff in schools.

You can view the Performance and Development Plan HERE

The PSA is considering what the Department has proposed in the context of the feedback received from PSA members during our engagement via the ‘listening meetings’ held earlier this year.

Member engagement and feedback on the PDR Process

Our ‘listening meetings’ were set in a focused questioning style format designed to help the PSA listen more closely to what members had to say about performance processes. To establish what a fair and equitable PDR system would look like for PSA members, 22 separate ‘listening meetings’ were conducted with School Administrative and Support (SAS) staff. The feedback members gave will guide our feedback to the Department.

Some of the key points obtained from members in these ‘Listening Meetings’ were:

• 85 percent of members who participated said a key point of ensuring a fair and effective system is to ensure there is an adequate budget and funding for performance development

• 95 percent of members noted that the process of review had to be consistent across the board

• A majority of members noted that training was key to fixing any perceived issues in performance and that the overall process should contain an appeals process.

We would like to thank SAS staff who participated in the Listening process for the feedback and views.

Further issues to consider with the PDR Process

The PSA has held meetings with the Department to discuss other areas of concern. They include but are not limited to:

• SAS Staff work under Statements of Duty not Capability Based Role Descriptions. The PSA has asked a number of times how SAS Staff can prepare Performance Development Plans under these circumstances

• Performance Development Responsibility assignment – defining the supervisor/manager demarcation between Principal and School Administration Managers (SAM) is unclear in the Department’s draft documentation. This is critical for SAS staff as the concern is that Principals will simply delegate all performance development duties to SAMs

• Appeal and review process

• SAS staff who work across multiple locations – will multiple performance development plans be required?

What next?

Your union will continue to advocate on behalf of members for a fair, transparent and equitable PDR system and that full and proper consultation takes place before it is implemented.

Please remember for 2016

In the interim, PSA members are asked NOT to participate in any performance development process as nothing has been agreed to yet by the PSA.

If members wish to give more feedback, please do so as soon as possible by emailing