Clare’s new education body offers a real chance for reform

Jason Clare’s plan to merge Australia’s education agencies could be the reform schools need — but only if it creates a clear line from Canberra’s policy rooms to Australia’s classrooms. Otherwise, the new mega-agency will be little more than shuffling acronyms on the decks of the Titanic.

Clare has announced that the four existing national agencies — ACARA, AITSL, ESA, and AERO — will be folded into a single new body, the Teaching and Learning Commission.

Few can credibly claim that the existing federal education agency collaboration is working optimally. For decades, student results have flat-lined, under- or poorly–preparedgraduates arrive to teach, and an ever-growing layer of chalk-pushers has piled on red tape at both state and federal level.

For too long, much of the education establishment has gotten in the way of, rather than supported, improving the system.

In recent years, this has begun to change. We’ve seen greater leadership from Canberra, systems driving good practice, and an overdue emphasis on lifting outcomes rather than just inputs.

New federal-state Better and Fairer School Funding Agreements set targets and ambitious shared reform objectives that must be met in exchange for Canberra’s funding.

Yet, the policymaking machinery is not aligned in a way that can credibly deliver the promise of these reforms.

It’s not that the individual parts of the architecture don’t each have a legitimate role: ACARA on curriculum and assessment, AITSL on teacher standards, ESA on technology delivery, and AERO on providing independent evidence.

But the collective sum of these agencies is less than their parts. They duplicate, overlap, and can occasionally offset each other’s work.

The outcome is not a national policy system but a jumble of acronyms that rarely pull in the same direction.

The success of Clare’s new Teaching and Learning Commission will come down to two tests.

First, the Commission must fix gaps across the agencies rather than multiplying redundancies. Due to circumstance, thedesign of the agencies doesn’t fit today’s system.

What AITSL sets out in its professional standards doesn’t always align with AERO’s recommended practices for effective teaching.

ACARA may promote effective assessments, but there is not a quality assurance of assessments hosted by colleagues at ESA.

ACARA may prepare an adequate curriculum document but has no means of ensuring teachers have the resources they need to implement it.

If well-designed, the Commission could cut duplication, alignpriorities, and iron out the inconsistencies and contradictions.This would at least do no harm, and could provide greater clarity for states, schools, and teachers.

And second, the role of evidence must be elevated rather than relegated in the merger.

The newest member of the architecture, the AustralianEducation Research Organisation, is arguably its most valuable player.

Despite a recent smear campaign from the sector’s worst vested interests, AERO’s current — and perhaps expanded — positive impact can be better felt by being embedded across the breadth of activity of the new Commission.

It must ensure there is finally a through-line from national priorities to evidence-based classroom practices; especially those spelled out in the new funding agreements with the states, like explicit teaching practices, and screening of students’ reading and numeracy.

If AERO emerges stronger, the Commission will have an anchor in what matters most: ensuring proven practices actually reach teachers and students.

The new Commission could be the structural reset the system needs; resulting in better curriculum, assessment, delivery of resources, teaching standards, and embedding of best practices in classrooms.

But a merger alone won’t guarantee success, and there’s a real risk it could end up looking like a punchline from Utopia: a bloated bureaucracy in Canberra’s ivory towers with no impact on teaching and learning.

Clare is right to want change and deserves credit for pushing bold reform. But his new Commission will be judged by whether it cuts through or clutters up the system once more.

Glenn Fahey is program director in education policy at the Centre for Independent Studies.