Estimates Debate — Vote Education Review Office

I feel that this vote should not pass without comment. Something like $26 million of taxpayers’ money will go into maintaining the Education Review Office for the next 12 months. I stated publicly on a number of occasions before I was elected to this Parliament that I had a long time ago lost confidence in that organisation. I have been staggered by the number of teachers, principals, and board of trustees representatives who are now contacting me to express their concerns about the way the Education Review Office is doing its job.

I invite the Minister to rise and explain one or two things that are not clear. The first is this. So often when one looks at a review report on a school one finds a statement like: “Most of the teaching is satisfactory.”, or “Most teachers are satisfactory.” The Education Review Office would claim that such assertions are made on the basis of an evidence-based inquiry methodology. The Education Review Office was not able to explain to a select committee exactly what that methodology is. The Minister may like to attempt to do so when he takes the call.

Let us think about it from a parent’s point of view for a moment—reading in a report about a school that most teachers are satisfactory. By implication, clearly, some are not. That is the judgment of the Education Review Office. What if one’s own child is in one of the classes where the teaching is not satisfactory? How is one to know that from the reports produced using the $26 million the Government is spending on this organisation? Nowhere in a review will parents be able to find out whether a school has the support of its community. I have been deeply concerned about some of the Education Review Office reports I have been shown, whereby clearly the community is voting with its feet and turning its back on a school, yet nowhere in the report is it stated that the school has lost connection with its community—that the aspirations and expectations the community has for its children are not being met by the aspirations the school has for them, and that the board of trustees might like to consider this and might like to consider engaging with its community. Nowhere will one find such a statement. So how can the Education Review Office give us such waffly reports—reports that clearly are designed not to upset people who clearly must not be upset—yet claim they are based on an evidence-based inquiry methodology?

Secondly, I invite the Minister to explain to the Committee, if he can, what methodology the Education Review Office applies, how it is applied, and what parents should make of it. Let us be very clear about this. There is no point in spending $26 million of taxpayers’ money if the reports we get are vague, general, non-specific, and do not assist parents and others with an interest in a school to form an accurate impression as to whether it is a suitable school for their children—whether they can put their children into the school with absolute confidence that they will be well taught, as well as be safe and all those other important things.

I believe that the Education Review Office has fallen into a trap. I hope that under new leadership—and I note that it is to have new leadership, which is interesting—the Education Review Office will move beyond one of its fatal flaws: the preconceived ideas and prejudices of its leadership and its reviewers.