Perth Modern: How leaders at prestigious school became mired in controversy and on the outer

Click on the polished website for WA’s leading public school, Perth Modern, and the first thing to appear is a message from the principal. The image of current head Michael Morgan chatting with smiling students looks as though it could have been there all year. Dig a little deeper and the website explains Mr Morgan has been appointed interim principal for the rest of Term 4. But nowhere does it mention that the reason he has been parachuted in to manage the State’s only academically selective school is because of the sudden suspension of its principal and deputy principal. Three weeks ago, the Education Department took the dramatic step of standing down Lois Joll, who has led the flagship public school for the past 10 years, and associate principal Val Furphy. On that day, the Monday after all Year 12 exams had finished, Ms Joll was called to a meeting at head office with director-general Lisa Rodgers. The Sunday Times understands the meeting was short, with Ms Joll blindsided by a directive not to return to school, and ended abruptly. Meanwhile, another department bureaucrat told staff members at the school the pair had been suspended. Within minutes, texts and WhatsApp messages were pinging on phones of current and former staff members. Ms Rodgers revealed little, saying only that a review into workplace culture that she had recently commissioned had “made it apparent that changes are required at the school”. As the State’s only academically selective school, Perth Modern should be the jewel in the crown for WA’s public education system. The Subiaco establishment lures the cream of secondary students, who compete via an entry exam for limited places, and it tops Year 12 results league tables every year. But despite producing some of the State’s best and brightest students, Perth Modern has often made headlines for negative reasons. While the Education Department has refused to divulge any of the reasons behind the bombshell suspensions, a key moment in the events leading up to that decision came when five senior teachers at Perth Modern last year detailed their concerns in a letter to the department’s regional office. As The West Australian revealed earlier this year, that letter pushed the department to commission external consultants Emergency Support Network to carry out a “pulse check” survey of staff wellbeing. When the results were eventually released to staff in September — almost a year after the survey — they revealed 43 per cent of respondents said they had plans to quit, a proportion which the State School Teachers Union described as “astonishingly high”. The survey’s release coincided with a decision by workplace regulator WorkSafe to launch a probe into allegations of bullying at Perth Modern School. WorkSafe said it was investigating claims of “inappropriate workplace behaviours” at Perth Modern, including its management of “psychosocial hazards”. A month later, in October, Education Department director-general Lisa Rodgers ordered a review “regarding relationships”, triggering the suspensions. WorkSafe closed its investigation after the suspensions were announced without making any findings on bullying. Records of a meeting held at Perth Modern in August last year, just after the complaint letter had been sent, provide a revealing insight into the state of relationships at that time between the school’s executive leaders and heads of learning areas. The document reveals how the principal and her offsider responded to news of the complaint, chiding the five teachers for going above their heads. The meeting heard that “a number of level three leaders had written a letter to complain about the leadership of the school”. “Anyone at the table who contributed to the letter and would like to meet with Lois to explain their rationale for submitting this letter, other than to cause disruption for the school, are welcome to do so,” the document said. Ms Furphy is recorded as saying that people had a right to write a letter. “Lois, Steve (former deputy Jurilj) and I will not lose our jobs — what will happen is that we will lose our funding, we will be in the paper and the school’s reputation will be affected,” she said. “A small group of leaders go behind people’s backs to have decisions overturned. “What do signatories think is going to happen as a result of sending a letter to the department? If I was a principal at a school I would not want any of the signatories to work for her.” Ms Joll also expressed concern about why the complainants took the step, suggesting the people involved should have been brave enough to have a conversation with executive leaders regarding their concerns. “What will happen is that this matter will go to the Minister,” she told the meeting. A spokesman for Education Minister Sue Ellery said her office held no record of any correspondence on the teachers’ letter of complaint. Teachers who have worked at Perth Modern have claimed that even though student discipline problems were almost non-existent, the school had a higher than expected turnover of staff. Former Perth Modern physics teacher and teachers’ union activist Marko Vojkovic, who left soon after Ms Joll took the helm a decade ago, said the school should have been considered “teaching nirvana” for every WA educator. “They should all be aspiring to teach highly-gifted, highly-motivated, really polite, well-mannered students,” he said. “How did we ever get to this stage, where the only principal of the only select school is removed from the school premises?” One former teacher who did not wish to be named said he was aware of several teachers who left Perth Modern or took medically approved leave because of what some have claimed has been the school’s toxic culture. “Anyone who was a union rep was bullied, in my view, because they were obviously the first port of call when they were trying to get industrial agreements adhered to,” he said. The teacher claimed anyone who questioned school leaders would be hounded on minor things, such as their adherence to dress code. “And they were constantly adjusting the timetable, increasing the number of classes people took,” he said. “It made the workplace almost unbearable because it was breaking people with workload.” “By reducing the number of minutes for each class it meant that they could push people under the maximum time limit, which meant they could allocate more classes to people.” Instead of the traditional load of five classes per week for most teachers, he said they were routinely given six or seven classes. “I’ve never seen a school where the industrial conditions were as bad,” he said. Another former teacher said he went on extended stress leave. “It seemed to me I was being called out on things other teachers wouldn’t be called out on,” he said. A parent of a Year 12 student said she chose not to send her youngest to Perth Modern because of the experience she had with her older child. “The stress that teachers experienced is only a portion of what students experience,” she said. The mother said she had been frustrated by the frequency of fundraising requests to help pay for a new auditorium and expensive piano. She believed money could have been better spent elsewhere. “Numerous buildings leak and the air-conditioning is terrible,” she said. “Some Year 12 classes have had multiple teachers and they don’t provide relief teachers for Year 12 classes (when regular teachers are absent).” Perth Modern, the State’s first public high school, opened its doors in 1911 as a pioneer of “modern” education that taught sciences and modern languages as well as the classics. For many years, entry was highly competitive to encourage bright students to attend, but entrance exams were discontinued in the 1960s. In the early 2000s, Ms Joll played a role in recommending the State Government consider establishing a selective school for gifted students. She was appointed principal at Perth Modern in 2011, coinciding with the school’s return to its roots with the first year of fully selective entry. Her appointment to one of the most sought-after schools in Australia raised some eyebrows at the time because she had not previously worked in a public school. Ms Joll, who is related by marriage to former education department director-general Paul Albert, had been employed in the department’s head office with responsibility for lifting student achievement across the State. Before moving into the department in 2004, Ms Joll was head of drama at Claremont private girls’ school Methodist Ladies’ College, and later the curriculum co-ordinator for years 10-12. She also worked at the Curriculum Council. Ms Furphy has also been at Perth Modern for more than a decade. In 2014, she was awarded a Churchill fellowship to travel around the world to investigate how other countries educate gifted teenagers. Ms Joll has weathered previous storms that would have broken less resilient principals. There were complaints from parents in 2016 when the school stopped providing relief teachers for Year 12 classes and when students were suspended after a cartoon lampooning the principal was distributed around the school. And teachers raised concerns in 2017 when the school offered them cash incentives to take classes that were larger than the negotiated limit. The West Australian revealed in 2017 that 10 members of the Perth Modern board had signed a letter to then education boss Sharyn O’Neill demanding she replace Ms Joll because they had lost confidence in her leadership. Board members complained Ms Joll failed to consult them on key decisions — particularly a proposal to build a 700-seat auditorium with a $10 million price tag. And they claimed a large amount of money had been set aside in the school’s finances for the project, without an independent review of whether it was the best use of funds. Ms O’Neill responded to their concerns by appointing professional services firm KPMG to carry out an independent review of the proposal. Although Ms Joll stayed on, all the board members who signed the letter subsequently stepped down. The KPMG report noted there had been a lack a lack of transparency on the sources of project funding. The report also questioned the practice of “the apparent reserving of operational funds for capital purposes”. It said the school was using funds from savings itl made in the previous two years on relief teacher salaries and savings from the operational budget. It recommended the Education Department “should clarify whether the use of a school’s savings from operational budget is in line with departmental policy”. Asked if there had been any clarification since 2017, Ms Rodgers said schools were allocated funding on an annual basis to serve the needs of the students for that year. “In some instances, schools can accumulate funds over time through their reserves to pay for or contribute to upgrades to their facilities, which the local school community has considered a priority in meeting the needs of their students,” she said. “The (KPMG) report was referring to specific transition funding that is fixed term in nature and would not normally be available to schools as part of their annual budgets to spend or save according to normal processes.” The auditorium proposal forged ahead, with the “Raise the Roof” campaign at the centre of most school fundraising activities for six years. And on September 11 this year, a triumphant orchestral concert finally heralded the official opening of the Cyril Tyler Auditorium — named after the stepfather of businessman and former student Don Tyler, who donated $1 million to the project. Critics have lined up to throw stones since Ms Joll and Ms Furphy were stood down. But other sources close to the school say much of the criticism is unfair — particularly when they are unable to defend themselves. They say while the pair may have pushed teachers, some staff members resented being asked to do the extra work that came with teaching students at the State’s top academic school. And they give credit to Ms Joll for her tireless work in getting a state-of-the-art auditorium built that would benefit students for many years to come. In a video made to mark its opening, school board chair and former WA governor Ken Michael referred to it as “a significant milestone” for Perth Modern that would inspire learning and creativity. “I’d also like to add our special thanks and appreciation to principal Lois Joll for the commitment she has had, and the dedication, to bring this to fruition,” he said. Others question why any alleged problems at Perth Modern were not identified in its last school performance review, in 2019, which found it demonstrated “effective practice in creating the conditions required for school success”. Principals’ Federation of WA president Bevan Ripp said the suspension of Perth Modern’s leaders brought into question the department’s own management processes. “If things were as bad as this group of people essentially are saying, then how come the school’s 2019 performance review was such a glowing report,” he said. “It doesn’t add up.”

Perth Modern: How leaders at prestigious school became mired in controversy and on the outer

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