In the term 4, 2006 edition of School Post, SAASSO revealed the State Government’s plan to raid your school’s SASIF account.
The South Australian Schools Investment Fund (SASIF) is the mandated investment fund for your school. For a number of years, you have been encouraged to invest your funds in this account (whether short term or long term). As an incentive to manage your budget prudently, a competitive rate of interest is offered on the account.
Any accountant will tell you that such an investment strategy – even on a short term basis – is vital to any business.
Schools use this fund for:
• Investment of Governing Council funds
• Long term projects
• Short term ‘parking’ of salaries etc.
• Contingency funds (5% of annual budget, as recommended by DECS)
Schools use this fund intelligently; with many schools now able to fund programs and staff from the interest earned on their SASIF accounts.
However, in the 2006 budget, the Minister accused schools of ‘hoarding’ money and advised that the government would take the interest earned on SASIF, as one of many strategies to fund the new Super Schools.
It was also announced that DECS would determine what a ‘reasonable level’ of savings should be for schools – with any amount over this losing the interest earned.
Many areas of savings were declared to be excluded from the raid:
• Governing Council funds
• Any money allocated to a specific project – building funds
• Short-term ‘parking’ of salaries etc. that are only in SASIF for a few weeks, at any time.
However, DECS is still maintaining that, even with these exclusions, schools will lose between 60% & 70% of their interest. This is unsettling – as most of you would know, precious few schools have ‘spare’ money just sitting around….
As a result of the School Post article, SAASSO received numerous calls from affiliates, outraged at the Minister’s plan. Earlier this year, SAASSO conducted a sample poll of approximately 20% of affiliates – 99% of which supported petitioning the Minister to drop the planned raid on the SASIF account.
Recently, SAASSO met with the Minister to present a submission on behalf of Governing Councils. In this meeting, the Minister stated that the intent of the plan is to target those schools ‘hoarding’ money and that schools using the account responsibly will not be affected – and yet at a recent meeting with DECS, SAASSO was advised that the 60% - 70% estimate still applies.
While maintaining our complete opposition to the plan, SAASSO, as your representative, is currently being consulted by DECS to determine this ‘reasonable level’ of savings. We can only hope that this will reflect the Minister’s intention and result in the 60% - 70% estimate dropping ‘dramatically’….
Submission to the Minister for Education and Children's Services