No, Minister. We don't need another education inquiry, we need a 7-12 fix.

Occasionally, reflecting on yet another Government Minister duck-shoving
a decision, I ask myself: what is the point of being elected to Parliament if
you don’t want to make decisions?

I must admit, this thought crossed my mind this week when the newly
minted Minister for Education, Ms Jo Palmer, bravely announced that she
was going to commission an independent inquiry into Tasmania’s
education system to tell her how to – presumably – fix education in
Tasmania.

Put aside for one moment if you can the fact that by commissioning this
inquiry Ms Palmer was effectively declaring no confidence in the way her
Government, and indeed her Premier who was Education Minister for four
years from 2014-18, has handled education.

Put aside, if you can, the fact that the Government already employees
thousands of experts in education to advise the Minister on how to “fix”
the education system on a daily basis; not just education policy experts
but also the teachers themselves.

You can definitely put aside the Minister’s nonsense claim that the
Parliament forced her to do it. In fact, it did no such thing, merely “calling”
on the Government to commission an inquiry.

You can even ignore the fact that instigating this inquiry was explicitly
ruled out by the Government during the election campaign. What harm a
broken election promise, eh?

But what the Minister should not have ignored is one of my number one
rules of politics (with apologies to “Yes, Minister”): never commission an
inquiry unless you know the outcome, and are prepared to implement it.

So, what exactly is Minister Palmer expecting this inquiry to find?

I’ll take a stab: it’ll find that we need to spend more on education; it’ll find
we need to focus more on teaching literacy and numeracy; and if the
economists and economic rationalists get hold of it, it’ll probably find that
we’ve got too many schools, particularly primary schools.

One wonders if the Minister and her Premier have thought about how they
are going to deal with the inevitable recommendation from the inquiry to
put more cash into education, in the current constrained budgetary
environment.

Or, how they will deal with the politically poisoned challis of closing
schools that went so well for Nick “I saved the schools” McKim last time it
was tried in 2011.

(Spolier: they haven’t).

No doubt our education system has serious problems, particularly after
year 10 when the number of students going on to complete year 12 is
trending worryingly in the wrong direction.

But the solution isn’t yet another inquiry; the solution is to actually
implement the policy the Liberals took the 2014 election, of extending all
high schools to year 12.

Just like exists in every other State in the country.

Hang on, I hear you say - isn’t that policy already in place?

Well, yes technically it is. Every public high school in Tasmania does now
go through to year 12, and over the past decade an impressive 7,500 or
so young Tasmanians have graduated through it.

The problem is, the policy isn’t being implemented properly by an
education bureaucracy who are starving it of funds and attention, in
favour of the clearly broken College system.

And, its implementation is being opposed every step of the way by a
teacher’s union who hate the idea of change unless it involves more
money for their members.

We all know the problem. While ever the College system continues to exist
in its current form, years 11 and 12 in high schools are going to continue
to be treated as the inferior option for post-year 10 education.

And while ever the College system exists, there is going to be a continued
perception that compulsory education ends at year 10.

The truth is, under the Liberals’ 2014 election policy it was always the
intention that once all high schools had been extended to year 12, the
existing College system would be repurposed and merged into our
existing high school network.

So, for example, Elizabeth College in central Hobart would become a
campus of a larger 7-12 high school incorporating the old New Town and
Ogilvie High Schools (now Hobart City High).

Sadly, in January this year, the former Education Minister squibbed it and
rejected exactly such a proposal.

Who knows how much is being paid by Minister Palmer to outsource her
job to an education policy wonk from far north Queensland. I’d hazard a
guess it’s in the order of $100,000 or more.

I don’t normally give my services away for free, but here I’ll make an
exception. Scrap the inquiry, save yourself $100,000, and properly
implement the education policy that the Liberals took to the 2014
election.

Who knows, it might just work. (It will work).

- BRAD STANSFIELD is a Partner at Font PR and Font Publishing, owner
of this newspaper. He was former Premier Will Hodgman’s Chief of
Staff from 2010-2018.