Catholic Schools NSW (Catholic Schools New South Wales) designed Better, Smarter Regulation to assess the incidence and burden of regulation with respect to school principals and teachers and to identify proposals for the government to lighten this burden. 

The final report is available here. 

Teachers and principals have consistently reported that compliance requirements take precious time away from teaching. Teacher workloads have increased because of this compliance burden, despite additional resources and more support staff. This report, developed through a programme of consultation, seeks to address this burden and recommends solutions that will allow more time for teachers and principals to focus on their students. 

This document has the benefit of insights from a wide group of professionals and key stakeholder groups. These include Catholic Diocesan education offices, school principals and teachers from systemic and non-systemic Catholic schools, inter-diocesan policy advisory and reference groups, the NSW Association of Catholic School Principals, and the Federation of Religious Institute and Ministerial PJP Schools in NSW and ACT. 

Catholic Schools New South Wales also engaged the Independent Education Union (NSW), who has provided valuable input. 

The report identifies four priority areas for reform: 

1. Teacher accreditation: Simplifying the pathway to teacher accreditation while continuing to improve teacher quality. 

1. Financial compliance: Supporting better financial accountability through streamlining financial reporting. 

1. Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD) on Students with Disability: Promoting better support for students with disability by giving teachers more time to focus directly on students. 

1. School governance: Better supporting school principals by providing more time to focus on the core mission of schools.  

The consultation process also identified that changes to the school curriculum and school reports to parents, Vocational and Education Training (VET), school annual reports, and school registration manuals, would reduce the compliance burden for schools. 

Overall, the recommendations identify a more proportionate, flexible and adaptable regulatory approach that maintains a strong emphasis on professionalism, transparency and accountability.