The Audit Office report into the Rudd Government’s Building the Education Revolution was released yesterday, finding the scheme was largely successful… not, wait: it was an absolute mess.
The confused media narrative over this issue is quite staggering. As Bernard Keane said (subscriber only) in yesterday’s Crikey Daily Mail, “No performance review by the ANAO … ever gives any program a complete tick.”
At the crux of the report:
There are some positive early indicators that the program is making progress toward achieving its intended outcomes. Lead economic indicators, including construction approvals, show that the introduction of BER P21 contributed to a reversal in the decline in non‐residential construction activity that resulted from the global financial crisis. Education industry stakeholders, including peak bodies, Education Authorities and a substantial majority of school principals have also been positive about the improvement in primary school facilities that will result from the program.
But that’s not what made the headlines yesterday:
Audit slams Rudd’s primary school building program
Auditor slams cost blowouts at schools
Principals doubt value of school building scheme
Audit of schools-building program finds projects late, inflexible
“Erroneous piffle” says Possum Comitatus, who is compiling all the “criminally flatulent” reporting on this issue at Crikey‘s Pollytics blog.
At Pure Poison, Tobias Ziegler tracks exactly how The Australian twisted an article originally titled “BER auditor finds some progress on jobs” into “BER audit finds problem but ‘value for money’ of individual projects outside scope” within hours. As he concludes:
The whole thing just seems shoddy, and I don’t see how the public – who won’t go reading the report, and who will only read the snippets and hear the soundbites – get anything resembling the truth out of this type of “reporting”.
So are the punters following their mastheads’ lead on this today? Here’s the confused, often contradictory messages running through Australia’s media:
In The Australian, the editorial, titled “School building audit says program must do better” claims the report “found serious problems”, while another article reports that it “has cast doubt over Kevin Rudd’s claim to have saved Australia from recession”. Samantha Maiden questions Julia Gillard’s assertion that the BER kept “our nation out of recession”, while Dennis Shanahan both acknowledges that the report “says positive things”, but devotes seven paragraphs to the “flaws” “exposed” by the report, surmising that it has left her with “a political problem”. And education reporter Justine Ferrari questions the depth of the report itself.
The Age‘s editorial runs with the headline “School building program scores a bare pass“, but is quite forgiving, acknowledging that the media has spun the report negatively and unfairly:
..the prevailing tone of media reports leading up to the audit’s release yesterday suggested the government was poised for a caning … this has not come to pass
Michelle Grattan takes a similar line:
The picture emerges of a massive, basically successful program that had some glitches due to its size and the speed of rollout.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the auditor “took Gillard to task”, highlighting:
construction delays, inflexible bureaucracy and inadequate monitoring arrangements for the $14 billion scheme.
The West Australian has a curious use of double negatives in its reporting, saying the audit has “failed to back any changes” to the scheme and “effectively cleared the Government of bungling the scheme”
The Canberra Times says the report concluded the program was “too prescriptive” and “outlined several problems with its implementation.”
The Herald Sun‘s Michael Harvey says:
Auditor-General Ian McPhee described a building program strangled by delays, cost blowouts and complicated federal red tape
And the Courier Mail has also run with the “red tape” line.
And in the Daily Telegraph‘s Malcolm Farr leads with “Government’s schools program has its flaws”, claiming the “review has found procedural problems.”
So what’s the real story? Was the BER a scandalous saga or a success? Why not read it for yourself — it’s the only way to get any straight answers today.
The problem for the government is that the insulation saga, both the truth and the myths, have damaged the government’s reputation for program delivery. Rudd and Gillard need to come out hard spruiking what has been achieved, both for schools and the economy. They need to push the line that the Liberals had a recipe for recession and doing nothing for schools.
It is also time to roll out a massive scare campaign on Abbott’s opposition to the resource tax – a scare campaign that will overwhelm Abbott’s the-economy-will-collapse scare campaign. The government’s campaign should focus on the damage to small business, and business generally, and the impoverishing of workers in retirement.
The government has not worked hard enough to destroy this parvenu fraud and it is now time to go in hard and relentlessly.
I find it amazing that the discussion is about how an educational spend contributes to economic growth and not how it contributes to education. This government is much the same as previous governments in equating the spending of money as an end in itself. We know we are succeeding with our education revolution because we have spent x dollars on it.
Can someone advise if the audit evaluates how this benefits education?
@PB: “Can someone advise if the audit evaluates how this benefits education?”
‘Evaluates’ connotes judging the worth of something.
The only part of the 202 page report that I can find that talks about educational outcomes is at paragraph 7.33:
“Program effects on teaching and learning outcomes
7.33 The ANAO’s survey results reflect strong support for the program, and
confidence in its outcomes. Over 95 per cent of principals were confident the
BER program would provide their school with an improvement of ongoing
value to their school and school community, while over 80 per cent of
principals were confident the program would achieve its education and
community benefit outcome (see Figure 7.11).”
I cannot find a definition of the ‘education outcome’ mentioned.
However, the great majority of the surveyed principals appear to have judged/evaluated the program as worthwhile. This does not surprise me, as most school provincials I have met are only too happy to have any money spent on their schools.
^ that should read “as most school principals”
Education outcomes:
hundreds of thousands of kids currently had to play in uncovered areas during rain or heat, now they can safely play in covered areas adding to their concentration levels and enabling exercise after lunch instead of the boredom of being stuck inside.
Anyone with kids or any teacher will tell you that is worth a million bucks to every school.
the claim that things were too prescriptive are sort of right but reading the whole report shows that overall the DEEWR and Gillard were very open to changes so many schools got what they asked for.
Ferrari has the most to lose because she got sucker punched over and over again with the nonsense stories she was peddling. Like the little crook from Epping North who featured on a front page.
Stutchbury can take a bow too demanding that most of the program be shut down but the most interesting thing is the fact that while they were writing all those bogus stories of all those shonks most of the money and building had not even been started.
I have seen sports grounds in some schools, under pinning of existing buildings in others, new halls in others, – the schools seem to have pretty much taken their pick after the prescriptive measures were relaxed.
Pyne and co. can whine as much as they like, but even the East Marden primary school got 7 new school rooms that were long over due.
Ferrari once reported that the Fleurieu Pensinsula school was being ripped off compared to Kangaroo Island schools.
A quick search showed that KI had three fairly large schools many km apart while FP had one major school with several little satellites a few km away, two of them with less than 50 kids and one with less than 20 that was about to close.
She pretended the two situations were exactly the same but on no measure is that the truth.
She jumped into bed with tossers making up yarns and has been caught out because she didn’t bother to check.
It is a comprehensive report but over all there is no harsh criticism and I dare Ferrari to call Ian McPhee some ALP stooge.