Big new bureaucracy creates uncertainty

Labor’s plans to establish a sprawling new national bureaucracy to determine how much funding each school will receive could potentially diminish school autonomy and state government authority, Christopher Pyne, Shadow Minister for Education said today.

“It is unclear how much the new bureaucracy will cost or how much the states and territories will be expected to contribute and it is unknown how many additional public servants will be required to operate it,” Mr Pyne said.

“Why should state governments pay for more public servants in Canberra when the funding could be used for more teachers and education outcomes?

“The truth is the Government has released a half-baked plan for education and the Schools Minister is now criss-crossing the country talking about dramatic reform but providing no details, no specifics, no answers and not even a commitment to the additional funds the model requires.

“Mr Garrett has committed to establish a review into Labor’s two year old review.

“There is a growing list of unanswered questions. No Government Minister has committed to indexation of funding at the current rate leaving non-government schools in funding limbo and there is no guarantee that the new model won’t means test parents of non-government school students to determine funding levels.

“There is also no guarantee that the sprawling new ‘independent’ bureaucracy needed to operate the proposed model that will control the purse strings won’t dictate to state governments and non-government schools how to run their school systems.  

“Parents and schools are rightly concerned about what this proposal will mean for them and I call on the Government to simply guarantee that no school will be worse off in real terms,” Mr Pyne said.

February 23, 2011