It’s only February, but it’s already clear that 2023 is shaping up to be another busy year for schools across Australia. To ensure that you are prepared for what is to come, CompliSpace has looked at the key global trends and predictions for 2023 provided by IdeaGen and picked out the key messages relevant for schools in Australia. Access the full report via this link: Click here.

What Are the Top Four Trends and Predictions?

• The cost-of-living challenge
• Moving from literal to risk-based thinking
• Resilience
• AI, automation and ethics

The Cost-of-Living Challenge

In the last 12 months, the cost-of-living has seen an increase across Australia. This has been due to mortgage interest charges, the cost of energy, and household living costs being the highest Australia has seen in the past two decades.

Research conducted by AMP in 2022 found that employees stressed about their finances are costing the Australian economy an estimated $66.8 billion due to distraction, lost motivation and productivity.

Increases in the cost-of-living can expose schools to a number of risks. This includes:

Affordability of Services

The Educator Online reported in January 2023 that 17 per cent of Australian parents are considering moving their child from private to public schools to save money, while an additional 10 per cent have already made the switch due to rising living costs.

Schools will want to be proactive in identifying parents and families that are experiencing financial stress and put in place a range of measures to assist them including pastoral care and negotiating school fees arrangements to ease the burden.

Impact on Employees       

The cost-of-living crisis is expected to see employees across the globe affected by financial stress. With CompliSpace’s recent survey of school leaders (to be released soon) finding that 92 per cent of schools across Australia are currently being impacted by staff stress and burnout, schools need to be on the lookout for employees on the brink of collapse.

Looking after teaching staff is particularly important as financial anxiety in teachers has been linked to several poor outcomes for schools. A 2019 survey of 2,000 teachers in the USA found that teachers who were suffering from financial anxiety had poorer attendance at school and were looking to leave their jobs. Both these factors had an impact on the continuity of education for students and an administrative impact on those responsible for staffing schools.

With new legislation requiring organisations to identify and manage psychosocial hazards, it is important for schools to recognise that a higher proportion of staff may be impacted by stress during this time and be proactive in supporting and managing these issues.

Impact on Schools

As indicated above, highly stressed staff may turn up to work less often, want to leave altogether, or need time off due to a stress-related injury.

Schools may also see reductions in productivity and quality of work from highly stressed staff. This may lead to increases in complaints from students, parents and the community, increasing reputational risk for the school.

Financial stress may also lead to poor judgement. The Commonwealth Fraud Prevention Centre lists significant personal stress and financial hardship as common traits or red flags of employees who are at a higher risk of committing internal fraud.

Vulnerable employees in desperate situations may also use poor judgment, making them at increased risk of exploitation from scams and other cybercrimes. This in turn may expose schools to cyber-based risks within their IT systems. According to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Scamwatch, Australians lost a record amount of more than $2 billion to scams in 2021.

How can you minimise risk at your school?

• Be proactive about offering financial relief to impacted families
• Check in with staff about how they are being impacted and promote employee assistance programs
• Be proactive about identifying and managing staff psychosocial hazards
• Monitor data that shows changes in productivity or quality (e.g. complaints, performance)
• Familiarise yourself with red flags and behaviours that may indicate an increased risk of fraud and corruption
• Run refresher training on cybersecurity, scams, and fraud and corruption.

Compliance – Moving from Literal to Risk-Based Thinking

In highly-regulated industries such as education, there are a multitude of laws, regulations and standards that organisations must identify and continue to comply with. Moving from literal to risk-based thinking means focusing on the outcome of the compliance requirement rather than focusing simply on the legal and regulatory requirement.

If we use child safeguarding as an example, there are several legal and regulatory compliance requirements in this area when recruiting a new employee to work with children, such as working with children checks. Literal thinking simply focuses on the legal requirement to ensure that all staff have a current working with children check clearance. A risk-based approach focused on the outcome asks a different question: Are we satisfied that the candidate is suitable and safe to work with children and will they implement and support the promotion of child safeguarding? To answer that question requires more than tick a box compliance (such as compliance with the working with children check) and will necessitate schools developing a whole range of child safe human resources systems and practices.

Although a box-ticking approach to managing compliance can be reassuring, it rarely focuses on the outcomes that the regulation was designed to address in the first place. It also ignores the risk faced by the organisations meaning sometimes the action taken is less or more than is needed.

How do you move your school from literal to risk-based thinking when it comes to meeting your compliance obligations?

• Educate your team on what risk-based critical thinking looks like
• Encourage and value risk-based critical thinking from your team
• Identify opportunities to shift the focus of compliance activities from getting it done’, to ‘doing it better’
  • this may include engaging with consumers and other key stakeholders in coming up with fit for purpose solutions to address compliance obligations
• Capture evidence-based thinking
  • for example, instead of asking your team whether an obligation has been met or not, require them to provide evidence and an explanation about what they have done.
• Ask questions to ensure that actions to address compliance requirements are actually effective in practice, such as the working with children check example above.

Resilience

Resilience has been critical in how organisations have survived and bounced back over the last few years. In a world of uncertainty, there is an opportunity to leverage the capabilities of resilience that have been gained in schools through the pandemic.

In their July 2022 report Risk Proof: A Framework for Building Organizational Resilience in an Uncertain Future the World Economic Forum found that:

“…the human element of resilience was consistently identified by respondents as the key foundation of future organizational resilience. We anticipate that this trend will only continue to grow in importance in the years ahead.”

How do you build on existing resilience capabilities?

• Invest in reskilling and upskilling people at every level (leaders to teachers)
• Develop an agile mindset that will enable people to thrive when things change in unexpected ways
• Stress test software and systems to ensure that they are resilient and agile
• Build awareness of uncertainty at all levels
  • for example, when discussing operational plans, ask “what do we know, what do we not know that could impact on these plans being successfully implemented?”

AI, Automation and Ethics

The use of AI technology within schools across Australia has gained recent media attention, especially with the availability of software such as Chat GPT. In Western Australia, for example, the State Government has banned the use of the software while Catholic Education WA have preferred to take a risk-based approach to the use of this technology.

For those considering using AI and Automation, what are some governance basics to consider?

• Consider creating a cross functional and diversity committee to review your AI and machine learning protocols and policies
• Implement a formal system for assessing the potential risks, benefits and learning opportunities associated with the use of this technology
• If your software providers use AI, ask to see their AI ethics protocol and challenge them if they don’t have one.

Final Thoughts

Schools in Australia are set for a busy year ahead during uncertain times. To navigate the uncertainty, schools can learn from current and predicted trends to get ready now for what is to come.

Finding ways to look after staff and keeping them well will be crucial for schools looking to maintain high quality educational outcomes for students and build organisational resilience. It will also help to minimise risks to reputation, and exposure to fraud, corruption and cyber threats.

Schools that can help their teams to make the shift from tick-box compliance to risk-based thinking will see better outcomes from the investment needed to manage compliance outcomes and it may even be a source of innovation.

Resilience continues to be a critical capability for those looking to thrive in uncertain and ambiguous environments. Schools that can continue to build on capabilities earned throughout the pandemic will be better placed for the challenges ahead.

And finally, with AI and automation predicted to place an increasing role in our lives over the next 12 months, it is recommended that schools begin looking to governance structures, such as committees, to direct action and ensure that ethical considerations, risks and opportunities are systematically addressed and aligned with the school's values and strategic objectives.