Leonie Ebert's Story

The path to principal

Leonie’s first appointment as principal was at a country high school.  She began establishing herself as principal prior to taking up her appointment as she had received a telephone call from a colleague working in the district to tell her there were all sorts of stories circulating locally, such as, she couldn’t speak English, she had a child out of wedlock and boys would be disadvantaged.  In response, Leonie and her husband made an appointment with the Chairperson of the School Council and visited the local community. While there, they visited the editor of the local paper who did an in-depth interview with Leonie. The interview resulted in an extensive article being published in the local paper about her qualifications and achievements. They then had a friendly and useful meeting with the Chair of the School Council over afternoon tea. As they left the Chair said he did not know what he could say to the boys at the silos!  Apparently, she was not what they were expecting. It appears they were expecting a stern woman with her hair done up in a bun. She found that very amusing.

Leonie was invited to be a principal long before she became one. She didn’t accept because she wanted to learn about educational administration.  At one stage a School Inspector advised her that if she wanted to be a principal she shouldn’t get married!  There was no mention of the need to prepare for such a demanding and responsible job.  A scholarship from the Education Department enabled her to achieve a Masters in Educational Administration at the University of New England. 

  

Growing in the job

Being proactive helped Leonie to develop a good rapport with the School Council and she believes that people were happy to have her at the school. Furthermore, at her first school assembly when one of the students was playing up, she told him off.   This made the impression that she was a firm disciplinarian!

An informative newsletter kept the community well versed about the school. As Leonie was writing about educational matters she had the school support staff check the newsletters before they were sent out to ensure they would be easily understood. She made every effort to involve parents in decisions made about the life of the school.

Communication and participation of parents and staff in decisions made about the school were very important for building her credibility in the school and community in order to bring about structural change within the school.

Leonie brought with her a strong educational philosophy and a commitment to union values combined with the experiences gained from working with a range of established principals, educators and union leaders. This formed the basis for her work.

Professional development of self and staff was also important. She invited an experienced principal who had had a profound influence on her to run professional development sessions at the school with senior staff.  Leonie’s immense interest in curriculum determined that she structured the school in order to bring a closer connection between teachers and their students.

On reflection Leonie was happy that she had not accepted a principalship before she had completed a Masters in Educational Administration. She knew that she needed both qualifications and a time to reflect before taking on the very important job of leading a school.

  

During her first principal appointment Leonie was able to confirm and strengthen her belief in education based on her philosophy and this helped develop and modify actions taken in subsequent schools.

Excitement and Achievements

It was exciting seeing teachers taking responsibility for their work and coming up with great curriculum ideas that inspired students and related to their needs. Schools Commission programs such as the Participation and Equity Program helped teachers in this regard as it provided them with time, support and resources enabling them to achieve some great outcomes. 

Programs developed by some great young teachers in the Art Department also excited her. They would take students out on art excursions to lots of interesting places to really challenge their thinking and their views of the world around them. When there was a mouse plague in the region, the teachers got some of the mice and cured their skins to make bags and all sorts of things! It thrilled her to see the strategies they used to enhance creativity.  

Leonie recalled being excited later in her career (when she was principal of a metropolitan high school) by the work of a special education teacher who ran kinesiology sessions with his students.  A Year 8 student in the class had to be carried everywhere and he could do very little for himself.  The teacher helped him become more independent and improve his oral communication skills to a point where he could speak reasonably clearly.  It was really thrilling to see his development over time. The boy began to work in the hospitality industry and years later at a function he came up to Leonie and asked her in fairly understandable speech, “Do you remember me?” Leonie was excited when teachers were innovative and came up with wonderful outcomes for their students.  Another example at this school was encouraging a mother to become School Council Chairperson at a time when this was still quite unusual.

Challenging Times

One of the challenges in Leonie’s first principal appointment came when the Education Department changed the teacher to student staffing formula resulting in fewer staff positions being available at the school and a need for staff displacements. Displacement was not something she supported and she campaigned against this decision through the union. As a strong unionist she felt she was there to protect teachers’ jobs, not take them away. This was a very hard time.

When the staff displacement exercise occurred some conservative members of the local Rotary Club were negative towards her because she wrote about the effect of cuts on school staff in the school newsletter. When Leonie heard about this she asked to attend a Rotary meeting to ‘front up’. The situation was resolved with Leonie receiving lots of support.  It was, however, a very hard and unpleasant time.

When Leonie was appointed to her first metropolitan high school she was given a mandate to bring change to the school with an emphasis on girls’ education. This was no easy task, as a number of long-standing teaching staff could see no reason to change their comfortable existence and consequently endeavored to undermine her quietly. In contrast, the school support staff were very helpful.  She was also able to recruit some excellent teachers who understood the importance of curriculum change for girls.

Leonie was disappointed that in spite of staff efforts and enrolments improving that after her time the school was eventually closed along with others due to cuts in the education budget. The community campaigned against it but was not successful.

Support

Leonie’s husband was always a great support and immensely helpful to her.  They shared a common concern for humanity and the importance of education. They shared information, visited schools in Victoria and overseas, attended national and international conferences and debated social, political and economic issues.

Support came from the teachers’ union especially as it related to working conditions for teachers and the status of female teachers. For her, involvement in the union was important, as she didn’t want to see any exploitation in schools.

It was also important to maintain ongoing learning and involvement in professional organisations such as the Australian Curriculum Studies Association

Support also came from a range of people she worked with, especially the young staff at the school.

Advice

Become a leader because you want to serve the community and as a principal to serve the education of students.  It is not about status.  You must want to serve and make sure you always continue to learn, be prepared and be open to change for the benefit of your students.

Participation is absolutely key. All staff including SSOs, parents and students – everyone should participate in making important decisions in the life of the school. It is important to involve students in leadership and decision making programs. 

Give attention to the needs of diverse groups (Aboriginal, special need students) within the school. This is essential.  You are there for everyone. 

Public Relations - make links with a range of people and organisations and participate in their activities where possible. This enriches the school as well as your lifelong learning.   

Don’t get stuck in curriculum matters or ideology.  Grow and learn.  Lifelong learning shapes and enriches.

Kim Hebenstreit's Story

The path to principal

Kim had been teaching for eight years before he received his first promotion. During that period there was plenty of staff movement that provided him with a number of opportunities to serve in acting positions. This enabled him to try out how he felt about leadership. His transition to the principalship took a little longer than some of his peers because of personal circumstances that meant he was unable to take up country appointments, which had accelerated promotion for others. He had several roles as an adviser and applied for open positions as a senior, assistant principal, deputy and eventually principal.

One advisory role that helped shape his beliefs about education was with the Participation and Equity Program. The social justice initiatives that this program promoted left an abiding vision for how schools could play a part in building a better society. He had a very fortunate childhood with a strong state school education and migrant parents who were factory workers with a strong work ethic and who greatly valued education.

Experience as an advisor became a prime motivation for him to want to run a school and do something in this space. He saw the opportunity and the challenge to build a team that would work together to do something special for kids. Having a young family and a mortgage, the extra income was of course another motivator for Kim to tackle the role of principal.

Growing in the job

Kim started his teaching career in a newly built school with a specially selected principal who was able to choose many of his staff other than the 18 newly appointed teachers. There was a high level of excitement within the staff with the camaraderie of a large number of new recruits to teaching and experienced teachers providing excellent role models for them. They guided his growth and provided advice and inspiration. This gave Kim a really good understanding of what quality teaching looked like and set the scene for his own professional growth but also ultimately the standards and skills to which he wanted his staff to aspire.

His first leadership appointment was the antithesis of these earlier experiences but gave him a view of what needed to change to bring about improvement. The benchmark from this first appointment enabled him to see what was done better by principals he subsequently worked with and what he would want to do differently.

Excitement

The greatest thrill for Kim was to demonstrably show that the school had changed and he was able to leave it in a better place than when he arrived. One of the first things he did as a principal with the leadership team was to work with the staff to articulate the graduate qualities they wanted to achieve with their students. These became the sense of purpose for the whole staff as they worked through it collaboratively. This was then translated into what it meant for priorities, expenditure, staffing and so on. 

At the end of his first principal year a number of leadership positions became vacant. A number of well-liked staff were considered for those vacancies from the point of view of what they had done over the previous five years in relation to the sense of purpose. It was evident that some of these had contributed little leadership in this area and had not made a noticeable difference. So they examined the skill set required of leaders who could come in to the school and lead change. This set the trend of making some changes to target what the school wanted to achieve by building a team that would lift the school to the next level of performance.

The school looked for opportunities to promote successes publicly through the local press, working with parents, and opportunities for competitions such as training awards, public education awards and the like. These successes gave the staff confidence that they were working in a direction that was positive and were judged highly by external bodies.

Greatest achievement

Kim stepped into a school that was in many ways disjointed in the way it operated; it had a vocational focus, an academic stream and a new arrivals program for adults. Initially there were about 80 students from a refugee background. Over the last five years of Kim’s principalship this grew dramatically to almost 600 students making that component almost as large as the rest of the school. It coloured the fabric of the school in terms of language, students’ interests and much more.

Kim’s greatest achievement was enabling the school to celebrate that diversity. Everyone played a role in welcoming refugees and the school became the first United Nations School for Global Peace in South Australia. Every staff member could articulate the kind of community in which they wanted to live and how the school would serve that community. The school wanted a community that was characterised by peace, positive relationships and an understanding of sustainability not just of environmental resources but also from a very human point of view. The staff and students had to work together to respect and celebrate difference and involve the great wave of new people coming to our country helping them understand our political and legal systems and join with us to protect the freedoms that we sometimes (but should never) take for granted. The school very much became a village in itself where people could come not only to learn English but also to get settlement advice that included support with Australia’s health and welfare systems. That village characteristic was the greatest achievement and something that has endured.

Challenging times

Generally the most difficult times were connected with managing significant underperformance of a very small number of staff. In a large staff there are at times individuals who are not team players and who can drag others down, but more importantly they can make the lives of students very unpleasant and consequently negatively impact on student learning. In one example a staff member could convey the subject content relatively effectively but treated students dismissively and consequently inhibited their capacity to learn. This person did not characterise the qualities of an effective teacher but it took nine years to convince them that they were unsuited to teaching. Regardless of the efforts and opportunities provided to this person, they didn’t have the requisite skills to be respectful, engaging of students and enabling them to become successful learners.

The other significant challenge was when the government moved to cease funding for any education in state schools for adult students. This threatened the very existence of the school but, more importantly, it threatened the well being of a large number of the students that the staff felt deeply about. The motivation of the government was to reduce education funding with little or no regard to the implications for other government agencies such as housing, health, community support and the long term well-being of the students. By working with colleagues in similar schools an outcome was achieved that all parties could live with.

Support

Kim’s support came from his leadership teams, his family and critically from the small network of

colleagues who provided enormous support. Having greater experience than Kim, these colleagues were aware of issues with which Kim was grappling.

Advice

• Establish a network. 
• Acknowledge that what you know is closer to nothing than it is to everything!
• Work with your staff to develop a united common purpose that is agreed and understood by all and against which strategic decisions can be made.
• Have a comfortable pair of shoes! Visit classrooms, walk around the school, talk with people and show interest in what the staff and students are doing. In short be highly visible.

Susan Monks' Story

The path to principal
Prior to being appointed as a principal, Susan’s background was a bit unusual. Throughout her career she had spent long periods in schools, in both teaching and leadership positions but in between had stepped out to take support roles in the Education Department. She used this experience to her advantage in her appointment as the first, and therefore establishing, principal of a southern suburbs R-10 School. She knew how schools worked, but she also knew how school support worked, and how to negotiate staff and facilities, which was critical.

At the beginning she had two big challenges. The first was establishing a relationship with the School Council. Although the school had not opened when she was appointed, the School Council had been in existence for two years and had made decisions such as what the school uniform would be. To some extent the Council saw itself as the only decision making body. As staff were appointed, and enrolments began this would have to change.

Her second challenge related to the nature of a new R-10 school. The school was in an area of new housing and high population growth. It would begin with primary enrolments and expand to Year 10 as these students moved through the school. It was important to conceptualise and plan the school as R-10 but the initial staff would be primary. Susan’s secondary school background challenged many of the assumptions of some initial staff.

In an appointment like this Susan had no precedents. There had not been a principal to follow and very few examples of similar schools to learn from. It was very hard work. She drew on her experience from both previous schools and from her knowledge of the Department to get things done but she also had to balance the demands and assumptions of primary, and particularly junior primary, teachers with the need to shape the school for secondary students. There was not, at the time, a large number of female principals of secondary schools and few primary school principals with a secondary school background. She had a lot to prove, and no ready-made support structures.

The community of the new school was different from communities where she had previously served. These had been either poor or established middle class. In this new housing area there were parents who were highly ambitious for their children and looking to education to improve their future. They were determined their children would do well.

Growing in the job
You largely had to find your own way. There were no principal training courses; no mentoring programs. You assumed if you had not got something right it was your fault.

Enrolment proved to be a continuing challenge. The school constantly outstripped its enrolment predictions. Enrolment would be predicted at 100 and 400 would enrol. There was always a large number of contract teachers. At the end of the year they would leave and permanent teachers be appointed based on predicted numbers for the following year. When school re-opened more teachers would be needed. 

What Susan describes as “the in and out nature” of her career (meaning her history of moving between school and support role positions) enabled her to describe vacancies and plan staffing so she could reappoint the best of the contract teachers and be as efficient as possible in getting the extra equipment – desks, chairs, classrooms – that she was constantly needing. She understood the school’s needs only too well, but she also understood the constraints and pressures of the resource arms of the Department, and how to work within their constraints and pressures. She found herself defending either side to the other. Both had a point of view and both were right. She often had to duck, and many in the Department felt she haunted them – but she needed to and knew how to do it effectively.

These days there are fewer opportunities for aspiring secondary principals to get experience in support roles outside of schools. It served Susan very well.

Excitement!
The most exciting thing was that she was there! She had wanted to be a principal but her chances as a female secondary teacher had not been great. She had also wanted to start a new school. And here she was. She never got over the excitement and appreciation of it. Every morning when she drove around the corner and saw the school and students for whom she had to ensure an education she was energised. She had trouble believing it and thrived on it.

Challenging times
There were a few challenging incidents. One day Channel 7 reporters and cameras appeared outside the school for what turned out to be an issue about school zoning. Susan rang the Area Office and followed procedure.

Incidents like this were insignificant in comparison to the daily challenges of getting appropriate teachers and resources to ensure every child in the ever-expanding school had a space, a desk, a chair, books, a library and a learning program that would take them to Year 10. She was constantly preoccupied with intake, builders and staffing. The impact of getting any of this wrong constantly dragged her away from teaching and learning matters.

Then there were the layered views about curriculum within the school. There were three distinct views from the R-2 teachers, the 3-7 teachers and the 8-10 teachers that had to be thrashed out and reconciled. She recalls a staff meeting that some junior primary teachers declared a waste of time while secondary teachers declared it the best staff meeting they had ever attended!

There were behaviour management issues, not just of students, but of some staff appointed with warnings of problems. Performance management was stressful because there was not, at the time, a clear set of procedures for dealing with it. The fluid nature of staff numbers and contract appointments added to the uncertainty and stress.

Financial management was a challenge. Because the school began with primary enrolment, the financial officer was not a qualified bursar and funding was constantly fluctuating. While there was an establishment grant, the unpredictability of enrolments – and the fact that they constantly grew faster than forecasts – meant constant financial challenges with little expert help. There were no financial training programs for schools at that time.

Support
What Susan most needed was someone of whom she could confidentially ask stupid questions. She remembers early on in the job ringing a trusted principal colleague to ask how you got the school bins emptied.  She used to go home, pour herself a drink, cry or laugh, then get on the phone to her friends who were also new principals to talk over the day.

It was as much as anything an issue of confidence. Where do you get the confidence to know you’ve got it right?

Advice and Comments
With hindsight and added experience Susan would do it all differently today and would have much greater confidence. She decries the lack of training for principals at the time. She would take every training opportunity, drawing energy from the students and the privilege of delivering their education. 

Ken Cock's Story

The path to Principal

Being a Principal was something Ken had decided he really wanted to do. He had, in his term, “grown up through the game”, and understood that being a teacher prepared him for administrative roles in schools. He made an early decision that he wanted to be an educational administrator, feeling that he could do the job better than many administrators he encountered! He knew that was where he was heading and along the way he had learnt to differentiate good and bad educational practice. Knowing his goal, he did a Graduate Diploma in Educational Administration while he was a Senior/Coordinator. From that course he learned about power relationships and the difference between power and authority.

He had several early experiences in acting positions and learned from these that he had skills in working with colleagues. He thought he was a better administrator than he was a teacher. This was reinforced by positive feedback about his performance in acting roles.

His first principal appointment was a promotion within a difficult school. He felt that being promoted within the same school made his job easier because he could see how controversial situations had arisen and already had considerations to ponder how it could be different. The situation called for greater awareness of the rights of individual staff, especially young teachers. It was important to support their learning.

Ken didn’t begin with a powerful vision of teaching and learning but over time realised the need to articulate a vision with the underlying principle that education is for all. He quickly saw that a principal has to be able to support learning not only for students but for teachers, support staff and parents. It was his responsibility to ensure that every individual student, staff member and parent/guardian could participate.

He found there were people around him who did not believe that. For example, some parents  objected to mixed ability classes because they believed their child was brighter than others and should be grouped with only ‘bright’ children. He realised that as principal he had to set the rules but also provide the understanding, otherwise people would work against his direction and vision. The vision was important, but no use without the support to achieve it and the respect for other points of view. The vision with respect and support gave people confidence to change.

Growing in the job
Ken used as a touchstone the difference between power and authority. Key to his growth as a principal was the understanding that, in the role, he was always going to win any argument. He had the final say. Strategically he did not need to override, bully or dismiss concerns. He had seen from experience, as well as study, that people who are treated dismissively or backed into corners by an authority figure work against and undermine that authority. People need to feel supported. He tried to understand other points of view, to bring people around and help them understand. He spent his first few years learning that the principal’s job is about relationships, developing and maintaining them.

When he arrived at his second appointment, in Adelaide’s south, with 1700 students and suspension rates of 10-15 students a week, from the relatively small school in the Iron Triangle, he thought, “My God, I can’t do this job, it’s too big!”. In his experience, it is normal, in any principal’s job to have self-doubt and ask yourself: “Can I do this?”. You are known as the Principal of a particular school and it is daunting. You do, however, have skills and experiences to draw on and you gain confidence and grow into the job.

Excitement!
Managing major change was the thing he found most exciting as a principal. When, after 12 years as a principal in Australia, Ken took a job as principal of a private school of around 300 students in Indonesia, he walked in confident in what he needed to do to improve the school. He had a great time and achieved an enormous level of change, raising the quality of the teaching, he believes, from quite poor to really good. He knew how to go about creating change and how to get people working with him rather than against him.

The worst thing about being principal, in his view, was the feeling that you are working against the tide. He realised, after he left his southern school, that although he had made good and significant improvements for students, there were things he had not achieved, such as improvements in the Year 12 results. There is always more to do and you can always improve your performance.

In Indonesia he planned curriculum change over five years. It took five years to introduce the International Baccalaureate. He understood that he had to get the community – teachers, assistants, parents and students – committed to it, confident and competent to introduce it. There is no way the school could have done it when he first arrived. With preparation and planning it was highly successful and transformed the school.

Challenging times
When Ken went to his southern suburb school there were 159 staff, many of them highly committed to education and to achieving outcomes for disadvantaged students. Others, however, were less able to identify and address the needs of specific groups or individuals. Establishing and carrying the vision for a unified approach to improvement became a challenge. He needed to get the school community on the same page to work together for a single vision.

At the first staff meeting he explained his vision and then held a series of community meetings to clarify and renew a mission statement for the school. The school community finally unified around the motto ‘Education for All’. This really helped focus the school’s work. When the Chemistry teacher came in to argue for new stools with high backs for the lab, he did so on the basis that kids were being educationally disadvantaged by the old stools – and won his argument. The suspension policy was changed so that a school leader who suspended a student, personally took the student home to explain the situation to the parent and negotiate a return program.

Education Department policy at the time decreed that practical classes – for Home Economics, Craft, Science – should not be greater than 20. This meant that Maths and English classes were around 34 students. After a year Ken decided this was not good enough. Students were not getting enough help in the core curriculum areas. He worked out the school could average class sizes to 24 across the board. He talked to the timetable team. They did a dummy run and it worked. He then explained to the staff that class sizes would be 24. There were arguments that ‘these kids’ needed the practical subjects because they ‘don’t like Maths and English’. The arguments were worked through and extra teaching assistants provided in the practical classes to improve the ratio of adults to students. Ken met with every faculty and then introduced it. The change was instant. Immediately the withdrawal rooms had fewer students removed from class.

This, he believes, was the most successful change he made, and the one with the greatest impact on teaching and learning.

At the same school a group of students went on strike. There was no warning. One recess time about 200 students didn’t go back to class but sat on the oval. It appeared to be an issue of student voice. After a bit they left the school and walked into the local town centre. Ken followed them on foot – partly because he needed time to think. When the strikers got through the shopping centre and moved to the local park without incident, he returned to school and got the deputies together. They decided that as long as the strikers weren’t causing problems in the community they would let the strike run its course. They also believed that there were some staff members indirectly associated with the action. They sent some empathetic teachers to make sure the strikers were OK – with a reminder of responsibilities and duty of care.

At lunchtime, Ken went to where the strikers were gathered. By then there were reporters and a media helicopter overhead. Reporters spoke to the students and to Ken. After that the students dissipated. Many of them went back to school. The Education Department CEO rang Ken. The Department came behind him and was very supportive. The next morning the admin team made it clear that any students who didn’t return to class would be suspended. About 30 didn’t return and were suspended. Eventually all returned. Ken and his team talked to the student organisers about the impact on the school, as well as their issues.

On another occasion a disaffected parent went to This Day Tonight with a (completely false) claim of “Aboriginal gangs” at the school. At 11am in the morning a parent rang to ask about it because of a promo she had heard for the program. Ken notified the Chair of the School Council, who rang every Council member, all of whom rang the television channel to correct the story. The Council members rang others and the Channel was inundated with parents supporting the school. In the end the story was reduced to one minute on air and the community support spoke volumes for the school. Ken recalls this as an amazing experience. Even so, he didn’t sleep well on Sunday nights for about six years!

Support
Initially Ken did not find much support from principal colleagues. He had, he believes, to stand on his own two feet and get support from within. Ken needed someone outside the school that he trusted and could talk to, be open and honest with. He needed and got his District Superintendent’s support. In his experience, local principal networks were competitive and prone to jealousies and power plays. Deputy principals too, formed a supportive team. Much of his support came from home.

Advice and Comments
Ken is conscious that he is now looking back on his experience from a distance. Had he been asked while doing the job, he may have responded differently. From a distance, his advice would be:

      • make sure you have a vision;

• make sure you use authority rather than power: respect everyone in the school; be strong about what you believe; be able to explain why and how; don’t back people into corners;

• recognise and admit you are not always right - you won’t be, and you won’t always be successful; and

• don’t hold a grudge; have an argument by all means but don’t prolong it and don’t hold a grudge. 
  

Summary of promotion and selection procedures 1960-1996

These recorded stories of principals’ experiences span several generations and hence varying political/economic contexts. In this period, changes occurred in relation to responsibility and accountability, promotion and tenure as well as pay and conditions. Below are a few milestones in relation to promotion and selection.

Promotion processes, opportunities and selection procedures

In the late 60’s promotion to a Senior (Coordinator) was as quoted from one story - ‘almost automatic after 4 years of teaching’.. Subject specialist inspectors carried out assessment for elgibility, established and maintained ranked lists and managed promotions. Service length requirements had to be met before one was eligible for promotion to Deputy Principal or Principal e.g. 4 year service at senior level before eligibility to apply for Deputy position.

A wealth of system wide opportunities were available to Seniors to act as Special Seniors and subject consultants.

Coincident with this structure legislated requirements existed determining that on marriage female teachers became temporary employees and pregnant women needed to resign to have their child. Needless to say there were very, very few female Seniors, Deputy Principals and/or Principals in secondary schools - and those who were appointed were unmarried.

The Government Management and Employment Act 1985 (SA) ruled in s6 (1) (a) that “all selection processes shall be directed towards and based on a proper assessment of merit”.  Implementation of merit processes in DECS occurred from1985. Positions began to be advertised and required written application.

Gender

Until November 1966, a marriage bar existed and clauses in the Public Service Act prevented women from being permanent employees in the Commonwealth Public Service (or in State public services outside of NSW). Married women teachers were not employed on a permanent basis in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. Within 4 years, Australian states lifted their marriage bans, greatly affecting the nursing and teaching professions which traditionally employed women. In the 1960s in Australia, only 1 in every 10 workers was a married woman. A female wage or salary was 75% that of a male, and the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission ruled in 1969 that women should receive equal pay to men for equal work.

Creation of affirmative action positions

The Commonwealth government introduced the  Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act  in 1986. South Australia enacted the Equal Opportunity Act in 1984. Creation of affirmative action position presumably occurred in mid to late 1980s. South Australia enacted the first anti-discrimination law in regards to race and gender in Australia – the Prohibition of Discrimination Act 1996 (SA) and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 (SA).