ASPI: More bureaucracy and red tape

Schools Minister Peter Garrett’s announcement today that the Federal Government will establish another big bureaucracy to collect school data highlights Labor’s lost priorities in education.

“How can the central element of a national plan to improve schools be another bureaucracy when Labor supposedly supports increasing school autonomy,” asked the Shadow Minister for Education, Christopher Pyne today.

“Labor has already established the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), which is empowered to collect any and all school data the Government could possibly want according to its own charter.

According to the Act of Parliament that created ACARA its functions include:

• developing and administering a new national system of assessment and reporting
• collecting, managing and analysing student assessment data and other data relating to schools and comparative school performance
  • facilitating information sharing arrangements between Australian government bodies in relation to the collection, management and analysis of school data
  • publish information relating to school education, including information relating to comparative school performance. For example, an annual National Report on Schooling.

Today we have heard Peter Garrett announce that the new Australian School Performance Institute (ASPI) functions are almost exactly the same, namely:

• development of a new National Data Program to collect information on school performance.
• evaluation of  data on school performance, and coordinate and conduct research
• to publish of a range of information about schools, for example through a new annual State of our Schools report.

In 2008 Julia Gillard said ACARA would be “including more effective transparency and accountability mechanisms that meet the needs of students, parents, teachers and the broader community”

Peter Garrett said today that ASPI is needed because “we need better information about performance, more transparency, and stronger action to improve student achievement in our schools”.

“Mr Garrett wants to establish another agency that collects more data even though ACARA supposedly does the same thing.

“It will cost more money to operate, waste principals and teachers time with more forms, checklists and red tape and achieve no improvement at all in student outcomes, which is what really matters to parents,” Mr Pyne said. 

April 9, 2013