External review
7.5 THE SYSTEM
7.5.1 Final Responsibility
Under the legislation, the Minister for Education is ultimately accountable to Parliament for schooling in this State, regardless of whether or not children are in the government or independent school systems. The principal "instruments of delegation" for Ministerial responsibility are the Education Act 1928 and the Education Act Regulations 1960. Two other acts of State Parliament complete the statutory framework.8 Under the Westminster system of government, accountability is achieved through a chain of connections linking public servants (including teachers) to the people via the Minister and Parliament.
Parliamentarians are subject to the people through the ballot box at elections. In this system, "being accountable to" is very close to "being answerable to". Quite literally, the Minister for Education may be called upon in Parliament to answer any question about his or her responsibilities under the legislation. The Minister is also required to present annual reports to Parliament summarising the achievements of the agencies for which he or she has legislative responsibility. These basic requirements of the Minister have existed since the granting of responsible government.
7.5.2 Reporting Achievements Through Performance Indicators
Two key system-level givens are apparent in contemporary annual reports to Parliament.
One is relatively new; the other is old. They are, respectively, the requirements to report on "key effectiveness and efficiency performance indicators" and to provide "financial statements". Both are formal accountability requirements arising from the Financial Administration and Audit Act 1985 9 and they apply to all State Government agencies.
The former is directed to a department's achievements in relation to its stated objectives and the latter to sound financial management. In this section we emphasise the requirements related to the former.
The Financial Administration and Audit Act 1985 requires the "accountable officer" (the Director-Genera110, in the case of the Education Department) to report to Parliament in terms of performance indicators. These are defined" as key efficiency and effectiveness indicators which shall be relevant, verifiable, free from bias and quantifiable. The Act12 requires the Auditor General to audit agencies' performance indicators and state whether in his opinion they are "relevant and appropriate, having regard to their purpose and fairly represent indicated performance".
The Auditor General's role is, as it were, that of a third party acting on behalf of the Parliament and the people. This is evident in the Auditor General's description of the purpose of performance indicators as being:
... to assist users external to the agency to assess the performance of the agency in discharging the objectives it has been set. 1 see the Parliament as the principal user, but the public, the press and client or target groups of an agencys programs are also among the users of performance indicator information. My auditors ...
therefore review each agency's performance indicators to determine whether they enable the user to assess:
• absolute performance in achievement of predetermined goals;
• performance relative to previous performance; and
• performance relative to the performance of similar agencies (Western Australian Auditor General, 1993:23-24).
The Financial Administration and Audit Act 1985 introduced requirements which took some time to meet. Each agency had to reorganise its operations and reporting in terms of goal-directed "programs" and "sub-programs". Efficiency and effectiveness indicators had to be prepared for each program and specific objectives set for each sub-program. How agencies have met these requirements progressively since 1985 can be seen in their annual reports to Parliament. It was not until the 1992-93 financial year that the Auditor General felt that agencies were ready for him to express the formal audit opinions required under the Act.
The Education Department's 1992-93 annual report shows that its total operation was organised according to two programs and five sub-programs. The opinion of the Auditor General for the larger of the two programs - that related to the operation of government schools - was based on information compiled from:
• Monitoring Standards in Education sample testing in 1990 and 1992;
• Secondary Education Authority data on Year 10 and Year 12 students;
• Education Department census data; and
• Australian Bureau of Statistics census data and intercensal projections.
The Auditor General does not undertake an exhaustive annual analysis of this information when forming his opinion. Rather, he examines:
on a test basis, the relevant information systems to determine whether the information reported in the indicators is verifiable and free from significant bias.
(Opinion of the Auditor General, Ministry of Education Annual Report, 1992-93:14).
7.5.3 Performance Examinations by the Auditor General
A performance examination is a appraisal of an aspect of an agency's total operation by the Auditor Genera113. The Western Australian approach:
... is consistent with international trends to shift the focus of public sector auditing from an emphasis on compliance to informing Parliament about the achievement of objectives of government agencies and programs. It complements existing process and control oriented examinations that will continue to be a significant part of the work of the Auditor General.
(Auditor General, Child Care in Western Australia, 1993:1).
The large number of State publIc sector agencies and the resources available to the Office of the Auditor General are such that only a few performance examinations are conducted each year. By the same token, the Auditor General is not obligated to provide
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much advance notice of his intentions. The net effect is that agencies run the risk of an adverse opinion if they do not routinely maintain appropriate information related to their achievement of program and sub-program objectives.
7.5.4 The System's Accountability and Planning for Improvement
There are clear system-level legislative requirements - annual reports to Parliament and performance examinations - which necessitate the gathering and storage of information on the performance of students. Some of this information flows into the public record through Annual Reports and performance assessments. The formal opinions of the Auditor General, as well as any judgements made by Parliament, the media and other interested parties, also flow into the public record, thereby completing the feedback loop to the Minister and the Director-General.
The current system-level requirements can be met without reference to information flowing from the school accountability requirements. The Monitoring Standards in Education sample-testing of Years 3, 7 and 10 students is conducted independently of the internal review process of school accountability. So too with the processes involved in the collection and collation of lower- and upper-secondary performance data by the Secondary Education Authority" and the Education Department.
The Education Department's draft curriculum policy Curriculum Statements K-10: Policy and Guidelines suggests a tighter coupling of system- and school-level information systems. The draft policy is that:
• The Student Outcome Statements represent the essential elements of the curriculum.
• Progress towards the achievement of student outcomes, as stated in the Student Outcome Statements, will be the focus of school development planning.
• Schools will demonstrate educational accountability using the Student Outcome Statements.
In effect, this is saying that whatever else a school includes in its plan, it must include provision for the monitoring of students' achievements against centrally-determined outcome statements. A school's management information system would need to encompass this requirement. Performance indicators such as "The extent to which upper primary students are achieving level-5 outcomes in each of the eight learning areas" would need to be incorporated both in school- and system-level information systems.
To address problems in performance, the system already makes extensive use of Monitoring Standards in Education information in its strategic planning and resource allocation decisions. A valuable adjunct to this is the constantly improving qualitative information about schools' performance flowing from the school accountability policy.
The draft curriculum policy also opens up the way for local performance indicators and management information to be examined in the same manner as the Auditor General examines the central indicators and information. Indeed, the Director-General could in future have a school's indicators and management information examined to determine whether they enabled her or him to assess:
• absolute performance in achievement of expected student outcomes;
• performance relative to previous performance; and
• performance relative to the performance of similar schools.
The matter highlights another of the inherent strengths of the current school planning and accountability policies, and is a matter for consideration and further discussion in the light of progress made in the coming years with the Curriculum Framework we recommended in Chapter 5.
For the foreseeable future, we believe that the Education Department should continue to meet its system-level requirements by using its existing processes. However, every effort should be made to expand the scope of the Monitoring Standards in Education program to include all areas of the curricuIum15. Providing measures of the standards of education being achieved in government schools is vital for public accountability and for building public confidence in the government school system.
RECOMMENDATION 18
That the Monitoring Standards in Education program be extended to enable public reporting against all of the performance indicators of the Education Department's Statement of Ethos and Purpose.
NOTES
1. Consider. for example: "Adelaide coach Graham Cornes has declared his failing Crows now have to account for unacceptable performances. In the wake of Saturday's thrashing from North Melbourne, Cornes said every member of his squad was under review. Our stance is we have to be held accountable for our performances. They are not acceptable,' Cornes said." (West Australian, 13 June 1994:64).
2. The wording of the relevant Regulations is as follows:
VIII. A half yearly examination of each school will be held by such persons as His Excellency, the Governor, may from time to time appoint. On these occasions the Parents will be admitted, and a Report of the general state of each school will be published for general information.
IX. Parents who may feel themselves aggrieved by the improper treatment or for any neglect of their children's education, are requested to make immediate complaint to any of the visitors, and in the mean time not to remonstrate with the teacher.
3. This was the title of the permanent head of the Department until 1912.
4. In the case of the Achievement Certificate, the "Comparability Test".
5. This perception seems to include the lower secondary years, despite the advances made by the Secondary Education Authority with grade- related descriptors.
6. Section 7C of the Education Act, which permits action on the ground of misconduct, is also relevant. However, section 7C actions are only begun in exceptional circumstances and are therefore not centrally relevant to the arguments of this section of the Chapter. The Ombudsman (Parliamentary Commissioner for Administrative Investigations) also has powers relevant to complaints against teachers.
7. Under the current arrangements, the accountability of school decision-making groups is not spelled out in any of the policy statements. We assume that the answer resides in the notion of their being elected officials, who are accountable through the "ballot box" at elections for places in the group.
8. The Education Service Providers (Full Fee Overseas Students) Registration Act 1991 and the Public Education Endowment Act 1909. The following State legislation also is relevant to the activities of the Education Department: Country High Schools Authority Act 1960, Disabilities Services Act 1992, Equal Opportunity Act 1984, Financial Administration and Audit Act 1985, Occupational Health, Safety and Welfare Act 1984, Public Sector Management Act 1994, Secondary Education Authority Act 1984, State Supply Commission Act 1990, Workplace Agreements Act 1993.
The following Commonwealth legislation is relevant to the activities of the Education Department: Aboriginal Education Assistance Act 1989, Copyright Act 1968, Industrial Relations Reform act 1993, States Grants (Schools Assistance) Act 1988, States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Act 1992.
9. The FAAA consolidated the previous requirements in a single Act which applies to all agencies.
10. Currently designated in the Education Act as the "chief executive officer".
11. In Treasurer's Instruction 904.
12. Section 93 (1)(d).
13. Section 80 of the Financial Administration and Audit Act gives the Auditor General the authority, inter alia, to "carry out examinations of the efficiency and effectiveness of departments, statutory authorities or parts of departments or statutory authorities".
14. Now that there is no longer a Certificate of Lower Secondary Studies, responsibility for collecting and collating the statistics for the Unit Curriculum has passed from the Secondary Education Authority to the Education Department.
15. To date, information about standards across the system in English, mathematics and science has been reported through the Monitoring Standards program.
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