A Small But Firm Step Toward Reason: the RQF Laid to Rest. (December 22, 2007)

Just four weeks after being elected to government, the federal Labor Party announced through the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Kim Carr, that the government had cancelled the Research Quality Framework (RQF) because it was fundamentally flawed.

It now remains for Senator Carr to implement an assessment process that effectively utilises the systems of grant assessments used by the ARC and NHMRC, and which are currently being subjected to review in order to increase their effectiveness, together with critical, independent face to face reviews of the quality of every one of Australia's public universities.

Will such an extensive set of evaluations of the universities be time consuming and expensive?  Of course it will, but if Senator Carr together with the Minister for Education, Julia Gillard are to avoid the slap-dash ill conceived and confrontational approach taken by former Prime Minister John Howard through his Ministers for Education, Science and Training, that's what will have to be done.

It should become apparent before 2008 is half over whether or not there will be much more than soft-spoken rhetoric to Mr Rudd's promise of an Education Revolution.