BackSince 2013, the Ombudsman has dealt with more than 20 cases where school principals or staff allegedly gave jobs and contracts to family members, associates or related businesses. Several investigations found that principals failed to declare and in some cases, manage, their conflicts of interest. This report looks at three such cases, all received since the last public report on the subject in 2018.
Those three cases were not cases of corrupt staff deliberately disregarding their obligations as public officers. They were cases of people who were trying to solve problems quickly, but in doing so underestimated their obligations to avoid, declare and manage conflicts of interest and they occurred in spite of the Department’s comprehensive policy framework on conflict of interest and nepotism in schools.
Investigators observed that the complexity of the Department’s policy framework may be an obstacle for busy principals and school staff. Building a strong integrity culture - and effective ways of communicating what is right and wrong - requires more than policies on a website. This is an essential and relatively efficient way of communicating integrity rules. However, these cases show it is no guarantee that employees will read and understand their obligations.
One of the challenges that the Department is facing is the large workforce with more than 75,000 employees and communicating integrity expectations to such a large and decentralised workforce presents some obvious challenges. As only a small fraction of the Deparment's employees completed its training program, more training in ethical decision making is still needed. Therefore, the Ombudsman welcomes the Department of Education and Training ongoing initiatives on building a comprehensive policy framework and communicating those policies through training.
Source: Victorian Ombudsman
