Bureaucracy Eats Public School Funding

The growth in administrative staff in schools and in central departments has far outstripped the increase in teachers and students since 2015. The most dramatic staffing growth has occurred in state education departments.

The growth in administrative staff reflects increasing reporting and compliance regulations required by governments and is absorbing an increasing proportion of expenditure on public schools.

More funding is being diverted from core functions of teaching and supporting the learning and well-being of students to administrative and operational tasks. Moreover, there is widespread evidence that teachers are over-loaded with administrative tasks themselves.

Schools and teachers have to undertake some administrative tasks to meet government regulations but what is necessary and reasonable and what is unnecessary and wasteful of time and resources needs to be clarified.

The composition of public school staff has changed significantly, the proportion of teachers fell from 68.4% of all staff in public schools in 2015 to 62.2% in 2024. Administrative staff in schools increased from 23.5% of all staff in 2015 to 27.6% in 2024. Non-school staff increased from 4% to 6%. Total non-teaching staff (in school and out of school) increased from 31.6% to 37.8%.

The proportion of teachers in primary schools dropped from 70.3% to 65.5% while the proportion of administrative staff increased from 25.7% to 30.4%. Only 2.5% of primary school staff were specialist support in 2024 and was little changed from 2015 when it was 2.1%. There was also no change in the proportion of building and maintenance staff. Non-teaching staff increased from 29.7% of primary school staff to 34.7%, the increase being almost entirely due to the increase in administrative staff.

The good news is that governments are making greater effort to identify what is needed to reduce bureaucracy. The bad news is that government responses to date do not provide much confidence that unnecessary and wasteful regulations will be reduced to any significant extent.

Between 2015 and 2024. Non-teaching staff in public schools increased by 47.7% and non-school staff by 89.1% compared to only 7.4% for students and 16.2% for teachers. Non-teaching staff in primary schools increased by 44.9% compared to 4.3% for students and 15.6% for teachers. Non-teaching staff in secondary schools increased by 51.8% compared to 12.4% for students and 17% for teachers.

The number of executive staff in education departments more than doubled over the nine years from 635 in 2015 to 1,331 in 2024, an increase of 109.7%. The number of specialist support staff in central and regional offices almost doubled from 1,098 to 2,184, an increase of 98.9%. Specialist support staff in education departments include IT, human resource management, curriculum development, infrastructure planning, financial and other staff. The number of administrative staff increased from 8,284 to 15,512, an increase of 87.2%.

All these increases far outstripped the increase in students and teachers. The increase in executive staff was nearly seven times the increase in teachers and nearly 15 times the increase in students. The increase in specialist support staff was six times the increase in teachers and thirteen times the increase in students. The increase in administration staff was over five times the increase in teachers and nearly two times the increase in students.

Image by Miguel Á. Padriñán