Why the DER & BER were good ideas

Source: ABC News

I've never made any secret of the fact that I am by and large a supporter of the ALP, and have been for several years now. This is particularly relevant given the ALP's focus on what has generally been sound education policy, especially in the area of schools funding. Even though I don't want to get bogged down in the specifics of the various funding arrangements that have been in place over the years, the simple fact remains that I prefer an ALP approach to school funding than I do the LNP. This is of particular importance right now, what with the 2010 Federal Election in full swing. One of the key differentiators between the two parties in this election is around this area of funding, in particular the various Education Revolution initiatives that have been implemented in the last 3 years by the Rudd Government.

Two of these larger initiatives, the Digital Education Revolution and Building the Education Revolution, are both planned to be scrapped by an Abbott Goverment, because they are using the cutting of these supposedly "wasteful spending" programs to cut costs across the Forward Estimates to pay for some of their more "interesting" policies. While I don't have a problem with Oppositions, or indeed sitting Governments, cutting spending in programs to save money, the fact is the LNP are making a big issue about wasted dollars when the reality could not be further from the truth. The sad part is, the media (in particular the Australian and our national broadcaster the ABC) are helping them to achieve their aims of twisting reality.

The BER, for example, recently went under the microscope in response to these claims of wasted money and a rushed program, with the Opposition trumpeting the release of the report as proof that the BER was a waste of time and money - this despite the fact that "the report found that the 254 complaints made out of 24,000 projects were valid and about half of those were related to value for money" (source: ABC News). That basically translates to about 1% of all the projects, which means that 99% of the projects were completed within the guidelines the Government set out. Another choice quote from the same ABC News article states that "the report also found those projects that had more consultation with the school community had better value for money and better infrastructure, and a lack of consultation at some schools was due to the tight timelines."

The simple fact is that this entire anti-BER story has always been a media beat-up, one that allowed News Ltd. to sell newspapers, and gave the Opposition a gleeful line of attack on the Government. Allow me to offer a personal perspective on why I feel the BER has been a massive success story.

I work at an independent school, one which benefited greatly from the BER program. We managed to secure funding for a new school library, a high-tech Language Lab, revamps to several existing facilities, and some extensive work done on the College grounds. All in all, we managed to nab about $5m of the BER money. While the timeline was tight, yes, that was because the BER was put in place in response to the GFC, and was designed to keep the building industry ticking over for 12-18 months. Which in our case it did very well - for well over 12 months not a day went by where we didn't have a few dozen builders and other associated people doing work at the College. We got what we wanted, and it has benefited the College community greatly since the facilities came on-line at the start of this year.

Where we were lucky was that we already had plans drawn up for most of what we applied for - so we got what we wanted, and got good value for money. For the minority of schools complaining that there was little consultation time, and short timelines etc, the simple fact is that at no stage was the Government forcing schools to apply for the BER money. If schools have gone into this whole process half-cocked, and then came out of it complaining that things didn't go how they wanted, that isn't the Government's fault.

Another complaint I've heard levelled at the BER was that the scale of what could be built was quite limited - schools complaning that they ended up with a new library or multi-purpose hall when they wanted money for new classrooms etc. Well, again, that wasn't what the BER was there for. It would be like going to a restaurant that isn't licensed, knowing that fact as you go in, then complaining to the management when they won't let you buy a glass of wine.

Here in QLD, the Block Grant Authority was still functioning, and has slightly wider parameters under which you can request funding - so presumably there was nothing stopping those schools who wanted some funding for, say, revamping GLAs (General Learning Areas) instead of building a hall or library.

Still, I guess you cannot stop people from whinging about stuff that they cannot have. Am just saddened that the media allow such an easy ride on these stupid lies.

On the flipside, the LNP have stated that they plan to cut the funding to the DER if they win Government, and this ties into my other pet peeve right now - people complaining that laptops / computers etc haven't been flooding into schools, as per what was promised in the 2007 Federal Election by Kevin Rudd. I frequently hear from people, people not connected to education mind you, witter on about how the Government haven't made good on their promise to fund a 1:1 ratio of computers in high schools.

The question I hear from people is quite simple: "Where's all the computers that Ruddy promised?"

Well, pardon me for not punching you in the face for not seeing the obvious, but the fact is that the DER is flooding schools right now with computers - it's just that different schools are taking different approaches to how they roll them out. Some are adding extra computer labs, some are rolling out personal laptops / netbooks to students. At the College I work at, our IT department has been rolling out individual laptops to our Senior students all year, with those in the Junior and Middle schools getting exclusive access to the existing computer labs in the College. All in all, we've probably now got well over an extra 200 computers floating around the College compared to 12 months ago.

Not bad for a program that, according to the Great Unwashed, isn't even working.

Anyway, this is becoming a bit of a soapbox speech, so I might stop it now. Hopefully this has provided some extra insight into why these two programs were great ideas, and deserve to be fully rolled out as per the original visions. This is just one of the reasons why I am fearful of waking up to an Abbott Government on August 22. The fact is, on education they had 12 years to demonstrate their ideology - and their record is simply not good enough to re-elect them so soon.

Please feel free to sound out in the comments if you wish to discuss this topic further - as you can probably tell, I really am quite passionate about it!