PSA members bulletin LMBR update – October 2015 (PDF version)

On 8 October 2015, the PSA reported the Minister had accepted the PSA’s challenge to visit an LMBR school of the PSA’s choice. This was great news as the Minister could then hear directly from PSA members about the reality of the work overload problems and system failures faced by staff working directly with the system.

The selected school sites were confirmed and the PSA was awaiting confirmation on the Minister’s availability for the visit.

Unfortunately, late last week, the PSA was made aware that the visit may have been compromised by what appeared to be a sudden and unprecedented increase in support to one of our selected schools. As a result of this information, the PSA immediately contacted the Minister’s office and sent the following correspondence.

22 October, 2015

The Hon. Adrian Piccoli

Minister for Education

Dear Minister,

Thank you for meeting with the PSA on 25 September to hear our members’ concerns about further deployment of the Learning Management and Business Reform Program (LMBR).

Given the plan to roll out LMBR to more primary schools in Term 2 of 2016, PSA members were pleased to hear that you had agreed to visit an LMBR school of the PSA’s choice.

On 12 October the PSA rang Mr Jeremy Hutton from your office to advise of the PSA’s choice of one primary and one high school. This information was then emailed to Mr Hutton and to Mr Mark Grant, Executive Director, LMBR, in accordance with Mr Hutton’s request.

It appears that the visit may have been compromised. The PSA has been told that the primary school selected for your visit has received a sudden and unprecedented increase in support to resolve their LMBR issues.

The increased support included follow up phone calls and immediate attention to issues.

I’ve been advised that this had not occurred prior to the PSA selecting the site for the Minister’s visit and that the support was increased for the primary school but not for the high school.

Many staff at the other 229 schools know of these developments and are distressed.

The PSA has been asked to provide your office with evidence that the LMBR system is not ready for further roll out. I hope you agree that a sudden increase in support to the primary school selected for your visit would provide such evidence.

If the actions described above did indeed occur then I urge you to halt any further roll out of LMBR. I ask that you instead instruct your department to work constructively with the PSA on developing a proper means to identify when the time is truly right for LMBR to be rolled out.

Yours faithfully,

Anne Gardiner

General Secretary

On 28 October, the PSA received a written response to our letter from the Department. The letter did not respond to the issues raised but instead made reference to a single meeting that was previously organised. Please note that the PSA did not at any stage raise this meeting as being an issue.

(You can read the Department’s response HERE)

The PSA will ask the Minister whether his Department will now provide the same high level of service support to all 229 schools. This includes a rapid response rate to issues logged, or where this is not possible, advising the relevant SAS staff when helpdesk staff are away from their desk and when they could expect a response to their logged issue.

What now?

The PSA supports the LMBR. However, PSA members have told us that further LMBR roll out should be suspended while unfair workload problems remain.

The workload problems appear to be a result of:

• Repeated and/or ongoing LMBR system problems leading to “workarounds” and duplications;

• More work for School Executive Staff arising from the Local Schools, Local Decisions policy which has led to increasing delegation of the School Executive’s work to SAS Staff.

At the 26 October LMBR taskforce meeting, the Department advised that they have incorporated our workload concerns into their “lessons learnt” for the next roll out stage.

As such, they will have a stronger focus on the leadership role of Principals with LMBR. This will include advice to Principals about their own accountability for effectively resourcing LMBR in their schools. This means Principals should address SAS staff workloads in their school budget by:

• Ensuring that the budget includes sufficient payment for overtime for SAS Staff and/or

• Funds for additional trained staff to support the roll out of LMBR.

What next?

The Minister and the Department are insisting that the system is ready to roll out. As such, direct member action will be required to suspend any further roll out.

To inform our next steps, the PSA is now asking PSA members who work in the 229 LMBR focus schools to vote on this issue.   Please click on the link to vote in our survey.

(https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LMBROct)

Please note that the information you provide in the survey will be kept confidential.