Fiona Mueller, Director of Research at the Page Research Centre, wrote an opinion article in the Australian Financial Review:
Does Australia’s federal minister for education, Jason Clare, ever wonder why he
can’t let the states and territories handle schooling on their own?
Australian parents, students, frontline education workers, employers and
taxpayers can all see that Australia’s education system is in trouble.
At first sight, Clare’s proposal to shake up the system by merging four federal education entities into a single “super agency” sends up red flags about bureaucratic scope creep and the political imperative of being seen to act decisively to address public policy problems.
However, with Australia’s current education malaise so entrenched and the remedial capacity of state and territory authorities apparently so limited, this proposal must be an option. The choice of name is encouraging – Teaching and Learning Commission. It signals a renewed focus on teachers and students, the two groups who have long been buffeted by experimental methodologies and anti-intellectual policies dressed up as equity, both of which explain much of what has gone wrong.
