The Age, 5 February , 2006.

Principals wary of state school trust sheme
JASON DOWLING
STATE POLITICS

PARENTS would be part-owners of their children's school under a radical plan by a former education minister to improve state schools.

Parents would buy $1 units in a private trust that hopes to raise $20 million to build and maintain new schools.

The schools would be leased to the Government for 30 years and then become fully owned by the Government.

Don Hayward, education minister in the Kennett government, said private investment in government schools was a must if Victoria's state school students were to receive a "21st century education".

Mr Hayward, who now works in the private sector, plans to send his proposal to the State Government next week.

The Sunday Age revealed last week that the State Government was investigating public-private partnerships to build new state school infrastructure and was meeting with the Australian Education Union to discuss the idea.

Mr Hayward is chairman of Australian Public Trustees, which intends to tender for any privately funded state school infrastructure work. It has established a trust to hold state school infrastructure.

"These trusts are essentially not for profit, and could be set up to give them constitutions that clearly identify that their main objectives were to meet community need," Mr Hayward said.

He said new, well-equipped schools attracted the best teachers and provided the best learning environments.

Primary Principals' Association president Fred Ackerman welcomed private investment in state school infrastructure. But he said the association would support private funding models, including trusts and public-private partnerships, only if the money was additional to current Government expenditure, and if the financiers had no influence over the schools' governance or curriculum.

Andrew Blair, president of the Australian Secondary Principals Association, said that while he supported public-private partnerships, he did not support the trust model. He said it sounded like a model used for specialised schools in Britain called "city academies", where sponsors had a say in the curriculum, ethos and staffing.

He said support for the trust model would depend on legislation guaranteeing the trust would have no say over the running of the school.

Australian Education Union state president Mary Bluett said the union did not see any value in a trust structure over a public-private partnership model for new school buildings. She said a trust would simply add a layer of cost to building new schools.

Campbel Giles, spokeswoman for Education Minister, Lynne Kosky, said: "Any financial model the Government is prepared to consider in the future for the building of schools will always retain school ownership with Government."