Accountability, but who’s counting?
One of the significant outcomes of the MySchool website launched by the Government in late January with much fanfare is that parents will be given more detail regarding school and student performance.
Figures for student literacy and numeracy – NAPLAN results for years 3, 5, 7 and 9 – are supposed to indicate which schools are achieving outstanding results and which schools are suffering and, in the Education Minister’s estimation, require additional support or resourcing.
Educationalists have readily pointed out that to make such sweeping determinations based on one test held on one day, noting the vagaries of student academic ability across cohort years – not to mention the considerable variability that can exist in student test performances – hardly provides substantive evidence to judge a school’s education capability.
The Government’s bellicose response to AEU plans to boycott the May NAPLAN test program underlies teaching union concerns that MySchool will become a blunt instrument on which to reveal poor or below standard teaching performance.
If teachers don’t meet certain as yet unannounced evaluation guidelines they face a series of retraining criteria. Continual unacceptable performance will result in either their sacking or their replacement.
Quantitative performance measures with have flow-on consequences to a school’s future if Ms Gillard follows the NY School Chancellor Joel Klein model of education performance where underperforming public schools are closed and their facilities pass to other education users, notably the charter school movement.
In the case of the MySchool website evaluation philosophy, accountability is paramount.
However the community assesses MySchool how should the government’s principle of accountability and performance in education be balanced against the current imbroglio involving Minister Peter Garrett and his performance and administrative skills in overseeing his portfolio of the environment, heritage and the arts?
It seems Minister Garrett faced numerous test examples – not merely one, on one day - over nearly twelve months regarding letters of concern from government, unions and building and trade associations questioning the government’s hastily implemented home insulation program.
By any standard the Minister failed to pass the test of administrative performance and proper accountability in overseeing the roll out the government’s insulation scheme.
Will he be retrained? Should he be sacked?
Similar public concern has been expressed with the delayed roll out of the government’s school computer program whose cost has blown out by 50% over announced budget estimates.
Furthermore many critics and school principals believe the Government has wasted money in its BER infrastructure program, notwithstanding that a much needed funding injection was necessary to improve public school resourcing and infrastructure development.
While the Education Minister has sensibly delayed the infrastructure roll out – like the home insulation scheme its anticipated speed of implementation was unachievable and its propensity for waste and mismanagement significantly heightened – the Government has failed to hold any accountability measurement to its own project performance.
The Government was drawn kicking and screaming to announce an audit enquiry into the school’s infrastructure program.
As yet, nothing has been heard from this audit outcome although it appears, like the current Garrett circumstances, the government will ‘tough it out’ and then turn upon critics of its actions to demean their intentions and belittle their cynicism for questioning government education initiatives.
The home insulation and school computer roll out and the BER infrastructure funding allocations clearly reveal government accountability principles have been trashed.
It appears there is one rule of accountability for government – ‘we are not accountable: it was all someone else’s fault’ - but an entirely different set of rules for everyone involved with education evaluation – ‘schools will be accountable, teachers will be evaluated on their performance, parents have a right to demand answers from teachers’.
The Prime Minister has stated he has full faith in his environment minister, despite the recent revelations of ministerial ineptness.
The Prime Minister would never dare impugn the integrity and accountability of the Deputy Prime Minister.
The Australian public should demand that this nation’s Westminster Parliamentary traditions are upheld regarding ministerial accountability.
Voters and tax payers have a right to demand answers from politicians.
And yet the government will paradoxically hold accountable teachers, principals and school communities who often struggle under enormous odds to achieve at best minimum education standards for numerous young people who have simply not been gifted with high academic ability.
So much for the Australian sense of 'fair go'!
Postscript
At least one wag got it right by stating that with Julia Gillard’s connections she could easily arrange a cushy job for Peter Garrett as spokesperson for the Australian hairdressing industry. Garrett’s hair style choice would mean he would be accountable to no one.
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