Administration staff in schools should be aware of the Department of Education’s push to privatise the IT programs used for student administration, via the Administration Marketplace Panel for Schools (AMPS), formerly known as the School Administration and Management Marketplace (SAM Marketplace).
Your union the É«ÀÇÉçÇøbelieves this project is a bad idea for many reasons, some of which are listed in an article that has been prepared for an upcoming issue of Red Tape.
What the Department has failed to make clear is that the first phase of this project has a rollout period that does not require schools to cut over to a new Student Finance system until June 2024. Despite this, schools are being pressured to attend webinars and information sessions on new suppliers, and make hurried choices now, while some ‘approved vendors’ do not even have a finished product available for demonstration.
Members in schools do not need any additional workload or pressures at this time of year. We urge you to support the É«ÀÇÉçÇøwork ban on engaging with this initiative. The Department has offered to provide some AMPS information sessions on the last day of term (Staff Development Day). However, your É«ÀÇÉçÇøDelegates deem this to be impractical, being immediately prior to the break, and more likely to cause undue worry over the holiday period.
We will recommend that the Department runs these sessions in Term 2 next year, at which time members will be welcome to attend, simply to be informed about the Department’s plans. However, until the many concerns have been addressed, the work ban on AMPS remains in place. The É«ÀÇÉçÇødirects members to NOT engage in any aspect of the AMPS program.
We encourage you to share the Red Tape article with your Principal, so they have a greater understanding of the significant impact that AMPS will have on workload, training, staffing, employment opportunities, funding and equity.