Respects teachers have brought their present woes upon themselves. For decades they have rolled back the two main objective, external measurements of performance: externally set and marked exams and external inspectors. Without those measurements, it is small wonder that governments and auditors scout round for other measurements.
Tuesday’s Budget and yesterday’s ACT Auditor-General’s report have put ACT teachers in the hot spot. The Budget has targeted 80 school-based positions. The Auditor has pertinently pointed out that ACT teachers are paid more and have fewer teaching hours than nearly all other states. The Auditor found also that non-teaching school staff had salaries 15.8 per cent above the Australian average and teacher-student ratios were on the Australian average but below what one would expect in a highly urbanised, consolidated system like the ACT. Total costs per student exceeded the Australian average by 7.1 per cent.
The Auditor called for more centralised curricula development; more face-to-face teaching and a reduction in average salaries.
The Budget has tried to cope with reduced Commonwealth funding by looking at the education system. The ACT Government has not looked at school closures, largely because it promised not to. Nor has it postponed new schools in newer areas. It has, however, pointed to the colleges where there is a large diversity of courses and small class sizes.
The knee-jerk conclusion from the Auditor’s report is that the ACT’s education system is not as efficient as those in other states and that the Government was right in its Budget to target 80 positions. It may well be that that conclusion is correct, but there is a critical premise missing before one could be sure. The ACT system is certainly more costly, but who is to say that it is not producing better-educated children?
Auditors are very good at analysing accounts and bottom lines. They are very good at assessing the performance of trading enterprises and at assessing financial soundness. But the Auditor, quite rightly, does not pretend to assess whether ACT children are getter a better education for the extra money bestowed upon those who teach them.
Sadly, the Auditor was forced to report that there was no accountability process in the ACT system to assess the quality of teachers in any systematic way. In the absence of it the audit was dependent on the opinion of teachers, students and parents and the general observations made during school visits. If teachers resist systematic, external, independent testing of both themselves and their students they will leave themselves vulnerable to understandable, though misguided, knee-jerk reactions from financial (as distinct from educational) audits.
The ACT education system should seek excellence in outcomes. That is, it should aim to provide the best education in Australia; not the cheapest. But we have no way of telling we are getting the best, and in the absence of a measure governments and the community will go for something they can measure: cheapness. And that might not produce the best outcome for Canberra’s children.