More broken promises, this time affecting thousands of students at university.
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Tony Abbott was famous for breaking promises. By the time he got the chop, there were, by some accounts, more than 450 broken promises (the ACTU’s Sally McManus), or maybe 85 broken promises (Independent Australia). The ABC’s Promise Tracker website, always moderate, claims that, as of Monday, looking at the 78 promises made before the 2013 election, 16 are broken, six are stalled and a further 39 are in progress.
Here’s another broken promise coming up, not on anyone’s list so far. Before Tony Abbott came to power, he said there would be no cuts to education, no cuts to health. The latest prime minister has done nothing to repair those cuts.
The Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) is a tiny little engine with a huge pull. Its funding runs out on June 30. It funds inspiration in university classrooms across the nation. It helps good teachers be better and, more importantly, helps make education have more impact on the students who arrive at universities. The OLT is the real manufacturer of the ideas boom. And all that is about to end on June 30.
Christopher Pyne’s 2015 plan to replace the OLT with a university-based institute was meant to start on July 1. No applications have gone out, no tender processes released. Nothing. Last year’s budget papers showed spending on the proposed institute falling from a projected $14 million in 2015 to $12 million this year and then just $8 million in both 2017 and 2018.
In comparison, the OLT received $57 million across three years. But now, no tenders, no process, no spending, no way to seed the ideas boom in teaching here. Now Pyne has been replaced by Simon Birmingham, whose entire focus appears to be on research, the tiny little OLT engine looks to be in a shed, decommissioned, ignored. Birmingham is all in praise of research at universities – but universities have two jobs.
For those of you who have been swept away by the Turnbull government’s innovation rhetoric, remember this: every single researcher with one of those prestigious grants from the Australian Research Council or the National Health and Medical Research Council had a teacher who made that possible. Good research springs from good teaching.
Margaret Gardner, the vice-chancellor of Monash University, despairs. She points out four key areas:
1. The OLT functions to reward good teaching. No-one else does that at a federal level.
2. The OLT funds innovation in learning and teaching. It is as tough to get those grants as it is to get an ARC or NHMRC grant.
3. It funds fellowships. Those fellowships are like hit squads to make big changes in university teaching and learning.
4. It develops strategic papers to give insight into key areas.
There are one million Australians at university. And funding for the Office of Learning and Teaching every year costs a handful of dollars for each one. It helps our doctors be better doctors and our students to be better students. And all for what? To save a government a few million dollars a year.
If this government really wants an ideas boom, it needs to spend the money where the ideas start and stop breaking promises. No cuts to education? This certainly looks like one.