Good principals with freedom make the difference, says researcher

What makes a good school is a good principal with the power to run the institution how he or she wants and the incentive to do it properly - and that's more common in the private sector, says researcher Mark Harrison.

Speaking at the Melbourne Institute's Making Schools Better summit in Melbourne recently, Dr Harrison said evidence showed private schools were superior to state schools: they were more efficient (they had higher levels of educational achievement at lower cost), achieved greater equality in educational outcomes between rich and poor, and produced more social benefits, such as teaching students to be tolerant and law-abiding.

Dr Harrison, author of the Education Forum book Education Matters: Government, Markets and New Zealand Schools, said private school superiority came from autonomy, market incentives and having principals with the freedom to organise the school as he or she wanted.

He said the Australian and New Zealand experience and international evidence showed regulation of private schools might threaten those sources of private school superiority.

"The result of government funding for private schools may be the government regulating them to become more like government schools, rather than encouraging government schools to operate more like private ones.

"Government shackles may follow government shekels. Policies to integrate private schools may move us away from a market system and make education worse," Dr Harrison said.

Leading education researchers including Stanford University professor Eric Hanushek also presented papers at the conference.

Other summit topics included:

• How important are teacher quality, class sizes, leadership, the socioeconomic background of students and other factors in determining school outcomes?
• Are the right incentives in place to encourage high quality teaching?
• Do we need to reform the school funding system?
• Do we need a more integrated public/private system?

More information on the summit.

The summit papers.

More information on Education Matters: Government, Markets and New Zealand Schools.