News & Views item - January 2007

 

 

Bishop Serves Up a Mixture of  Curate's Egg and Dog's Breakfast in Her Year As Minister for Education, Science and Training. (January 20, 2007)

    In what must be the mildest of rebukes Dorothy Illing of The Australian reports that a year after Julie Bishop was made federal Minister of Education, Science and Training her "detractors say she has lost some of the policy impetus she displayed when she assumed the mantle, a claim she hotly denies."

 

Nevertheless just what is she able to point to that has actually been put into place to significantly improve the support for Education at primary, secondary or tertiary levels, or Science in the public universities or research establishments is hardly impressive when compared with our cohort nations.

 

After an initial "get to know you" approach to the states' ministers of education, and the universities' administrations she has behaved increasingly like the bully put in charge of the class with orders by the head mistress to keep the pupils in their place.

 

She tells the media she is not about to back away from putting pressure on the states to co-operate on measures she believes will raise education standards. Adept at tapping into parental concerns about standards and values, she has pushed the states to raise the bar on literacy and numeracy, and adopt plain English report cards and merit-based pay for teachers - all emotive issues.

 

What's actually been accomplished by her tactics. Considerable heat, very little light, some motion but little action.

 

Ms Illing tells us, "She tried unsuccessfully to have a uniform school starting age of 4 1/2 years, and promoted more Australian history and citizenship education in schools. Then there was her call for civility. 'Our schools have a duty, or should have a duty to champion a sense of civility, good manners, tolerance and respect in their students,' she said in November, at the risk of sounding twee."

 

With regard to the universities she has just come out as the petulant protector of university students,  "I'll ensure university fees are fair," and we are told she says it's up to institutions to be more consumer-driven.  If they want greater freedom, they must diversify their sources of income.

 

And what's that suppose to mean?

 

"I'm not an interventionist. I'm not of the view that government has all the answers to all the issues," she says. "So I look to and encourage the sector to come up with solutions."

 

Which perhaps should be followed with, "And I'll tell you if it's what Mr Howard (I mean I) want, and if not, I'll cut your funding.

 

Then Ms Illing gets to the Research Quality Framework:

[L]ike many vice-chancellors, Robson [V-C University of Western Australia] doubts the merits of one of the hottest issues for universities, the first national assessment benchmark of the quality and impact of all publicly funded research, the research quality framework. Bishop inherited the British-style RQF proposal from Nelson. While many thought she would jettison it because of its scale, cost and complexity, she has forged ahead and now cites it as a highlight of her term. The Government has earmarked $87million to implement the exercise.
    It will comprise 13 committees of 152 assessors scrutinising research across 42 institutions. Because its results will be tied to about $600 million in existing federal research money, it is likely to concentrate research in some institutions and deplete it in others.
    "I remain to be convinced that we need a very expensive research quality framework," says Robson. "We are going to do an enormous amount of work with no additional funding."

And finally there is the revelation which is no revelation:

[T]he Government's razor gang... axed many of her funding plans for education, science and training in the lead-up to the May budget. She brushes aside the incident and says it was better to have happened then than closer to the budget. "I had a very ambitious package, I'll make no bones about it. I was asked to bring in ideas and I did," she says from an undisclosed overseas health retreat. "I had the choice: put up the big ask or have them define what they wanted you to do. So I decided to put up the big ask ..."

Just what was in these grand plans for education, science and training? We shall never know but bask you educators, academics, researchers, and would be technologists in the what might have been.

 

And finally for a minister who has been touted as having an "engaging style and intellect" the following calls that assessment into question.

A high turnover of staff in her office and the fluctuations in her department have created the perception that the advice lacks policy grunt. She rejects the assertion, defends her staff and turns the problem back on the sector: "There's no shortage of advice in this portfolio. I'm surprised by the lack of high-level policy development within the sector and the lack of constructive responses.

    "For a sector that says it wants greater freedom and less government control, its response to the directions that I've put out have been timid to say the least."

Ms Bishop is making Senator Vanstone, who held the portfolio sometime last millennium... well, appear almost reasonable?

 

But in fact Ms Bishop is simply trying to do what Mr Howard has told her he wants done but lacks the skill to develop the spin to make it appear that it is for the good of the nation.

 

Whether the Labor opposition has the skill to capitalise on that is the question and if they do, and gain government, what will be done to rectify the damage resulting from the short-term self-serving governing  by the current government will be the next and much more difficult question to deal with constructively.