A lifetime of restructuring

Citizen activist group PRIORITY PUBLIC examine the reorganisation of the DET known as Lifelong Learning.

The proposed restructuring of the NSW Department of Education and Training is simply a well-worn strategy to distract from the inadequacies of the current funding levels and to find savings from the abolition of support services and reduction in support staff. It was rumoured for months among community organisations. Its announcement was preceded by the predictable criticism of the size of bureaucracy. Savings will be yielded from these cuts in services which apparently are inefficient and ineffective. In a restructuring people lose their jobs, support for needed services is depleted and the sum total of the budget is diminished whatever is claimed to the contrary. There is a loss of productivity.

The air and rationale for this restructuring is no different. Streamlining, strengthening and supporting quality education are the claimed outcomes with a return of resources to schools. Functions are to be more efficient as a consequence. Those in the system who are beneficiaries of the changes are silent and work towards their success. Those whose functions disappear or are altered, protest. Internal divides are created and all functions suffer for a time.

This restructuring restores large regional offices to education and abolishes the districts, among other features. It obliterates the identity of TAFE Institutes through absorption into these offices while claiming their distinct identity will be preserved.

Regional offices were abolished just a few years before at great professional and service cost. They were then inefficient and costly. What has changed in the interim to cause this turnaround? The restructuring may or may not achieve its claimed objectives. What is certain is that jobs will be lost, professional services and administrative support will be damaged for a time, expectations will be changed, but no more funds will be created for the education pool. The separate missions of schools and TAFE Institutes will be confused in the community's understanding. Such a close linkage potentially sends the message that our public schools are not catering for a group whose destiny is narrowly vocational. This will be aided by the recent changes in fees policies for universities. The message about TAFE is that its adult and further education focus is to be subsumed to support for schools.

This will be a poor outcome for public education. This will further erode its capacity to restore its market share, but more importantly, its very damaged standing in communities as under-resourced and incapable of delivering quality.

The NSW State Labor Government has delivered some worthy reforms. This change is not worthy of the Government. It poses as reform and improvement, but is no more than a redistribution of already stretched and inadequate resources.

These resources are inadequate to sustain our public schools and technical and further education and adult education into the challenging future. A well paid teaching profession, a well supported school system, properly funded educational infrastructure and administrative services in the public sphere build its standing, capability and capacity and enable it to attract the best and support the most in need.

Priority Public is not opposed to reorganisations. It is opposed to using these as a substitute for a needed funding boost for our public education institutions. This restructuring will further deplete the essential administrative and educational infrastructure and support for our schools and TAFE Institutes.

Public investment in our schools is the responsibility of elected governments. We look to this government to accept that responsibility and restore educational resources to levels which increase the capacity of our public educational institutions to provide the quality desired by all in our community.

The article is based on a letter sent to Minister for Education and Training Dr Andrew Refshauge. Priority Public can be contacted at prioritypublic@telstra.com or PO Box 1491 Neutral Bay NSW 2089.

For further information

September 2003 contents