The Board of Studies, Teaching & Educational Standards NSW (BOSTES) has updated its Registered and Accredited Non-government Schools (NSW) Manual, via an official notice. Most of the changes to the registration manual are cosmetic and involve updates to references to legislation.

One of the changes that caught our eye however was standard 3.9.3 which provides that 'a registered non-government school must have policies and procedures for the proper governance of the school in place'. The Manual goes on to explain that the proprietor and the school's governing body are accountable for meeting this requirement but it does not spell out the exact expectations or requirements needed.

Interestingly, the commentary does state that the policies and procedures that a school should introduce in accordance with standard 3.9.3 must be consistent with 'properly accepted community norms for school governance' but what are 'properly accepted community norms'?

BOSTES does not provide a definition of what these norms are but the Manual does refer to the Australian Standard AS 8000 Good Governance Principles and materials from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) as examples of authoritative material on governance. The Manual goes on to state that BOSTES will at some point in the future develop 'guidelines to assist schools' in consultation with the non-government school sector and key stakeholders.

Although this change does indicate that BOSTES is concerned with improving the governance standards in schools the new requirements are vague in the extreme.

The AS 8000 Good Governance Principles are part of a series of standards that were published in 2003.  Other standards in the 8000 series include 8001 - Fraud and Corruption Control, 8002 - Organisational Codes of Conduct, 8003 Corporate Social Responsibility and 8004 Whistleblower Programs.   AS 8000 also references standards relating to Compliance (AS 3806), Risk Management (was AS/NZ 4360 is now ISO AS/NZ 31000), Complaints Handling (was AS/NZ 4269 is now ISO AS/NZ 10002) all of which are key legal requirements of ASIC regulated financial services and credit licensees.

What does this all mean?  Are schools now supposed to follow all these standards?

Whilst clearly these standards are not currently mandated non-government schools should nonetheless be on notice that their governance practices will be coming under increased scrutiny in the months and years to come.

In the coming weeks, we will continue to write about these changes and our recommendations for school governance policies and procedures. We would welcome your views and will be working with schools to develop submissions to put to BOSTES about this new standard 9.9.3. We will also write about some of the current best practice governance standards which your school can implement to ensure that it has the right framework to deal with any future changes.

If you would like to undertake a self assessment of your schools current governance framework, we invite you to complete the School Governance Online Self Assessment Tool.  This online tool will allow you to quickly undertake a self-assessment of the organisational governance, risk and compliance practices in your school. The tool has been developed having regard to the non- government school registration standards published in each state and territory and takes approximately 20-30 minutes to complete.

For your convenience, we have set out the new standard below:

3.9.3 A registered non-government school must have policies and procedures for the proper governance of the school in place.
This requirement provides for policies and procedures for the proper governance of the school to be in place. The responsible persons of the school, and in particular the school proprietor and the school’s governing body, are accountable for meeting this requirement. In general terms, the requisite policies and procedures must be consistent with properly accepted community norms for school governance. A number of widely accepted authorities exist in this regard, most notably the Australian Standard AS 8000 Good Governance Principles and the associated series of related standards. Other authoritative material is  available from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) particularly in  relation to the standards expected under the Corporations Law.  The BOSTES will develop further guidelines to assist schools in this regard in consultation with the non-government school sector and other key stakeholders.

The Registered and Accredited Individual Non-government Schools (NSW) Manual May 2014, BOSTES.