Competitive grants in autonomous public schools: how school principals are labouring for public school funding

This paper examines competitive grants for public schools, as a form of additional funding from the government. We draw on interviews with principals from different states in Australia to examine systemic impacts of competitive grants for public schools, exploring this in relation to school autonomy. Public school principals are labouring to generate additional school funding via competitive applications from the traditional state government, to supplement their core or regular government funding. The competitive applications are to fund what many would consider rudimentary or fundamental resources, such as school infrastructure and student wellbeing programs. For the interviewed principals, the drive to generate more funding was anchored within significant government funding shortfalls in public schools. The majority of interviewees did not find the funding model to be ‘needs-based’ or responsive. Autonomous public schools presented many paradoxes and contradictions, particularly in under-funded contexts; whilst on one hand, principals are tasked with managing their budgets, the majority experienced the environment as highly inflexible and often punitive, laden with bureaucratic red tape. The majority of interviewees expressed notions of responsibilisation for generating additional funds. In this context, we found that competitive funding applications increase school principal work intensification, with principals spending excessive time labouring to generate additional funding via competitive grant applications, in order to fund essential school projects. The labour involved in completing time-demanding funding applications supplants their traditional responsibilities and is critically reshaping their role as a school principal, to one of ‘grant applier’ and fundraiser, reinforcing the retreat of the traditional state.