Expansion did not, of course, end with the arrival of autonomy. In some ways, indeed, it increased.
There does, however, seem to be a difference in the situations before and after about 1972. Most of the conditions leading to expansion came into being before that date:
• the rising demand for secondary education;
• the perceived need for better educated teachers
• governmental recognition that teacher edu- cation was tertiary education and needed funding and facilities accordingly;
• recognition that the 'participation rate' in higher education in the community should be raised.
After 1972, these continued to be the main influences on development. Expansion continued, but its bases had already been established.
The Martin Report
As early as 1961, the Commonwealth Government set up a committee of inquiry into the future of tertiary education in Australia. It became known as the Martin Committee after its chairman, Sir Leslie Martin, and the Martin Report, tabled in 1 964, was one of the most far-reaching documents on education in Australia in the whole of its history.
Very briefly, the Martin Report saw tertiary edu- cation as divisible into three sectors - university education, technological education, and teacher education - and recommended the support of all three to enable an adequate system of institutions to be established. Had the recommendations been fully accepted, the era of expansion at Kelvin Grove might have come more quickly. However, the Menzies Government came down very firmly against any involvement in teacher education of the kind which produced the institutes of tech- nology, on the ground that teacher education was a function performed by the States for their own schools, and no part of Federal concern. The logic of this was doubtful, but no amount of protest could bring about a change.
One form of assistance, however, was made available. The Commonwealth offered grants to States for specific projects where existing buildings were seriously inadequate. This pro- vision brought a grant which made the construction of D Block for a library and art facilities possible, as has already been described.
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The College Joins the Tertiary Family
The full breakthrough came in 1972, when the Commonwealth agreed, on certain conditions, to fund teacher education on the same basis as it was already applied to other forms of tertiary edu- cation. At the time this was by joint State/
Commonwealth financing, but within a short time the Commonwealth Government took over the whole cost of funding tertiary education. The main conditions were:
• that teachers colleges should no longer be part of an Education Department but should be governed by their own councils;
• that the State Board of Advanced Education should co-ordinate the overall programs of tertiary education in the colleges of the State;
• that the Board should also supervise and approve budgets, staffing levels, and building programs in colleges, and should act as the State's agent in dealing with educational and financial matters requiring reference to Commonwealth authorities.
The costs of teacher education were rising rapidly, and the State entered into this arrangement with some enthusiasm, especially as the administrative arrangements setting up the board and the Councils were to be governed by State legislation.
Preparing for Autonomy
The first step was to appoint a council for each college. The Council was to contain two ex-officio members - the Principal and a representative of the Director-General of Education; members nominated by the Minister; and members elected by staff and students.
The matter of who should be nominated by the Minister was dealt with by allowing discussions between the Principal and the Chairman of the Board, and the Principal in his turn took staff members into his confidence. The result was a panel of members in whom the College could have confidence and from whom a wide range of management skills and experience became available.
Appointment of the Council came in July 1972, and at once the Council set about preparing to take over from the Department. Committees were appointed, by-laws and rules framed, and the nominated and elected members of the Council spent much time in discussions and planning.
When the change to autonomous government did
come, it came very quickly. To help in making a smooth transition, the Education Department retained financial management during 1973 while the Council prepared a budget for the next triennium, which was to begin in 1973. As matters turned out, even the financial management of the College was handed over earlier than anticipated, the Council becoming responsible quite early in 1973.
Staff Concerns at Autonomy
The amendment to the Education Act which set up the new administration of the College provided for staff members to elect whether to accept employ- ment with the Council or remain employed by the Education Department as part of the State Public Service. If they elected to join the College staff, they could expect conditions not less favourable than those under which they worked as public servants.
For non-academic staff the choice was not very difficult. Their salaries, hours of work, and other conditions were not essentially different; they could bring their entitlements such as sick leave and superannuation, where their awards provided it, with them. Perhaps the only major consider- ations were whether they would feel as secure in a relatively small work force as they did in the great Public Service system, whether promotion chances would be as good, and whether they would like Kelvin Grove when there were no transfer opportunities. Eventually, the great majority accepted employment with the College.
Academic staff found the choice less easy to make. In the transfer of power, many felt that they would be disadvantaged. Under Education Depart- ment control, they were in a familiar situation, because the great majority of them had been in its employment for many years. They knew about the length of the school and therefore the College year, about the workload, about promotion pos- sibilities, and other such matters. They were concerned about their future tenure of employ- ment, and about whether their formal qualifi- cations would be adequate in view of the apparent thrust in colleges for staff of higher academic qualifications. They were uncertain about the kind and extent of involvement the Council might require of them with the community, an involve- ment which they knew was encouraged in existing colleges of advanced education and which they inferred would be asked of them.
These were some of the many, and very natural, concerns felt by men and women who in many cases had spent twenty or thirty years serving the
State education system with skill, energy, and often distinction. They were the matter of many meetings among staff, among staff and the Principal and the Chairman of the Board, among staff at different colleges, and even with the Minister for Education. It did seem that some staff were trying to have their cake and eat it too. They wished to retain benefits attaching to school conditions, such as hours and vacations, while gaining benefits like higher salaries in tertiary education. In the event, however, they gradually came to see that, although the new I ife would not enntitle them to everything which they had enjoyed previously, there were enough attractions to make the change worth while. When the day of election came, only three academics did not elect to join the staff of the College, and one of those subsequently applied for appointment to an adver- tised vacancy.
Autonomy and the Students
The major changes in the lives of the students had already been made when the Diploma courses were brought in between 1 969 and 1 972. They were already working on time tables with time for library and assignment work, interaction with staff, and socializing with their friends. They had become used to optional and elective studies and the greater depth and breadth of courses. Other course changes which followed were not so much changes in kind as changes in detail.
At the same time there were changes which affected their lives at College. One was their direct and formal involvement in the governance of the College through the election of student members to the Council and, as a consequence, the involve- ment of students in the various standing and ad hoc committees set up by Council. The extent to which they took advantage of this opportunity to influence the course of their lives depended, of course, on them; but at times, when some students were involved, the influence was significant.
Autonomy also changed the process of selecting students. Until the late Sixties, selection for enrolment was, with few exceptions like art and music, handled entirely by the scholarships section of the Education Department: the colleges took what they were sent. About the time the Diploma courses were introduced, however, the Department had given the colleges the power to accept a small number of students by selecting them from applicants to the College, and admitting them on payment of fees determined by the Department. One consequence of the new arrangements was to pass to the colleges the
responsibility of selecting their own students. This involved processing their applications, interview- ing where necessary, collating the applications against Senior examination results or similar criteria, and making a final selection and a series of . offers of places. Eventually the process became so complex with ten colleges and three universities involved that the joint computer-based Queens- land Tertiary Admissions Centre was set up.
Students so selected who wished to be supported by a State scholarship were then given one if accepted by a College, while fees were abolished when Commonwalth funding came into force.
College Purposes: The Binna-Burra Document This interpolation looks forward some years, but would be hard to place except here. After 1972, the problems of assuming autonomy were so great that, as far as possible, College affairs were allowed to go on as they were wherever it seemed possible to let them. The Council set up a master plan for the site, a task which did seem of great importance. It is discussed in the next chapter. So far as courses were concerned, the facts that the Diploma courses had been set going, and had
,
been approved by the Board of Advanced Education, gave staff a framework for work which seemed to need time rather than immediate modification.
To plan and teach the new courses, the staff relied on accumulated knowledge and skill from their previous experience. The purposes behind them, and behind the functions of the College generally, were implicit rather than stated. The onset of autonomy, and very soon afterwards the serious illness of the Director, suggested a waiting period.
On his appointment, however, the new Director, Dr Botsman, had come into a new environment, as he had neither been educated nor employed in the Queensland system. He saw the need for an enunciation of purposes, and commissioned a group of staff, with consultants, to consider the matter and produce a statement.
The result was the 'Statement of Purpose, Goals, and Objectives', known in the College as the 'Binna-Burra Document' from the resort where the Commission held its retreats. The statement was published in 1977. From the section which follows, readers may see how the stated purpose had emerged from the thinking already in the College, and affected the developments which followed.
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The Statement of Purpose is published as Appendix 1.
Autonomy and Courses
In this field, some cynics among the staff began to ask, 'What autonomy?', as it soon became clear that autonomy in course design and presentation was by no means complete. The College had now to present its courses for approval and listing on a national register. As a first step, the courses existing at the end of 1972 were accepted for approval until a time when a course review could be conducted. Any new course proposed after that date had to be submitted to the Board after being designed by a course development committee which should contain external expert members as well as College staff. Course proposals should show the perceived need for the course and the proposed number of students to be enrolled, the structure of the course and the levels of skill and knowledge to be reached, the staff to be employed on the course, with the qualifications entitling them to be considered, the resources to be used, and their availability in the College, with an estimate of any new needs. The proposals were then considered by a course assessment com- mittee set up by the Board of Advanced Education and involving the Board of Teacher Education.
Similar procedures were involved in the re- assessment of courses which had previously been approved. The process of preparing a case for a new course, or for reappraisal of an existing course, called for expenditure of time, effort, and thought on no small scale. Small wonder that questions were asked about the nature and extent of autonomy. And unfavourable comparisons were made between the C.A. E. procedures and the apparent freedom of universities from the kind of external supervision described here.
What was overlooked to some extent was the effect of altered circumstances. University autonomy was achieved when universities were much smaller and concerned with much more select groups than was the case in the advanced education system, which was taking on aspects of large-scale production. Moreover, while universities did not have to undergo the kind of detailed inquiry into their courses as the colleges, they were coming under some outside control through the application of budgets approved by the Government and by the distribution of grants for research and other purposes. Universities, of course, do not like this; but it is a fact of higher education in the modern world. Finally, we should note that recent moves have been made to reduce the amount of supervision required and to allow
colleges, as they gain experience, to be more responsible for being judges of their own course developments.
The Growing Course Program
In 1972, the College was offering a variety of courses, all but one leading to the award of the Diploma of Teaching with one of a number of endorsements. One Certificate course remained - the two-year Arts/Science course for students with one year of University study (the S2 students taking the year of professional study). The College also had some part in the Fellowship Diploma in School Music, a joint offering by the Conserv- atorium and the College. All courses then offered had been approved for national registration.
Guidelines provided to the College by the Board of Advanced Education made it clear that the College could now consider varying this virtually homo- geneous course structure. Courses could be offered at various levels in two main groups - the UG or undergraduate courses, and the PG or post- graduate courses. The former were UG3 or Associate Diploma courses normally of two years' duration full-time; UG2 or Diploma courses, normally of three years' duration; and UG1, or degree courses at Bachelor's level requiring three or four years of full-time study. The PG courses were PG1 or Graduate Diploma, normally of one year's duration full-time, and the PG2 or Master's degree course, normally of two years' duration tu 11- time. The Diploma of Teaching course was of UG2 status, and the certificate course was a rather irregular UG3. It was now possible to move in both directions from that position and to offer courses at any level which suited the needs of a community population and which would be approved for funding. Of course, shorter, non-award courses in continuing education could still be offered, but they would not attract funds. They could be funded by a contract between the College and some government agency or private group, from fees paid to the College, or from the College's own resources up to an approved level of expenditure.
The Graduate Diploma or PG1 field seemed the most suitable one into which to move. The purpose of PG1 courses is to provide a relatively short but intellectually demanding course for people who have already graduated from another and more general course. Two main kinds could be offered: one for people with a general degree such as Arts or Science who now wished to become teachers, and the other for people already qualifi(:ld as teachers from a general course who sought the kind of knowledge and skill which would make them more expert in some specific
area of teaching. In other professional areas, the same situation could apply.
The first Graduate Diploma course at Kelvin Grove began in 1975. It was in secondary teaching, and offered strands in Art, Art/Humanities, and Science/ Agriculture, for potential teachers in those areas. It enrolled 71 students in its first year, and enrolments have continued at about that level since then. It is a full-time course which is pre- service, not in-service.
In the same year the first in-service Graduate Diploma, in Secondary Resource Teaching, was introduced. The Graduate Diploma form lends itself very well to in-service courses for qualified teachers, and has been largely used in that way.
Further in-service Graduate Diploma courses were introduced in the next few years:
• in 1976, the Graduate Diploma in Teacher Librarianship;
• in 1977, the Graduate Diploma in Outdoor Education;
• in 1979, the Graduate Diploma in Health Education;
• in 1980, the Graduate Diploma in Counselling.
From the names it can be seen how these courses satisfy the need for teachers with special skills;
not, perhaps, in large numbers, but available in sufficient force to provide support of various kinds for the staffs in schools.
Graduate Diplomas, while they are very important and service a significant number of teachers, are not generally attended by large numbers. Many teachers prefer to remain in the mainstream of education and put their efforts into helping the general development of a group of students in a primary school or a subject stream in a secondary school. Yet they too need higher qualifications and - dare we say it? - better salary and pro- motional prospects. For them, the more appro- priate course is a course leading to the award of a degree. Many teachers in this category have in the past studied for Arts or Science degrees, whether wishing to teach in high schools or primary, while many others have taken a Bachelor's degree in Education at a university. As the College grew in experience in the new era, it became increasingly clear that there was a place to take past students who had enjoyed some field experience a step further on the road of professional education.
Planning began in 1976 for a course for the B.Ed.
to be offered by the College. The course approval process continued through the year, and even-