School transport debacle cost cutting

Claims by the former NSW Department of Education Director of Finance, Ken Dixon, aired on ABC television last week, demonstrate that the school transport debacle affecting students with disabilities was not only incompetence but a deliberate act.

Forcing hundreds of disabled and disadvantaged students to wait for a school bus  that never arrived was not simply a case of bureaucratic bungling but was directly caused by government cost cutting.

The NSW Government has attempted to gloss over this disturbing fact.  The government’s media conference and release by the NSW Premier, Barry O’Farrell on Friday 11 February focused on finding DEC officers to blame, and sack.

O’Farrell wanted to portray it as nothing to do with government or its current education policy and everything to do with the actions or inactions of those officers required to implement that policy.

In an interview on ABC TV program 7:30 NSW on Friday 10 February , Ken Dixon made it clear that the real reason that students were abandoned was that NSW Treasury directed the Department to cap the cost of the scheme, whatever the consequence, and that the Department knowingly acquiesced.

Mr Dixon, a then senior officer of the Department himself, told both the NSW Treasury and very senior Departmental officers, that they should not attempt to do so as there was no fat. He warned that the scheme would be degraded.

Ken Dixon said:

“There was a determination on the part of people in the Treasury, NSW Treasury, that there should be savings achieved under the scheme.”

Reporter: “So why the drive then to take an axe to a transport program that is so desperately needed and for the most vulnerable?”

Dixon: “ … I don’t get it, I never did. The scheme was running as efficiently as it could be. There was no wastage in the scheme. And I told my Departmental officials at the time, and I told people in the Treasury that that was the case, that it was not worth pursuing to achieve savings on a scheme that was working as efficiently as it possibly could be."

However, the program’s budget was capped.

A review of the debacle was undertaken by former Director-General of Education, Dr Ken Boston. His report states:

“…  No additional funding was provided to meet the rising costs of the program. Instead, the then Department of Education and Training (DET) was required to ensure that the tender’s financial outcome would be met from the Program’s existing budget allocation.”

The core problem was Treasury forcing the Department to cap the funds available to assist these students. The impact of doing so was known to both the Treasury and the Department, yet they decided to go ahead with their callus cost cutting regardless of the damage it would  inflict on some of the most vulnerable young people in public schools.

Supporters of the “devolution agenda” for public schools need to be mindful that, should responsibility for provision of such special transport services be devolved to the school level, it will not be a government Department which can be held accountable, but each individual principal in each local community affected.