1. The Secretary's review 1999-2000
3. A summary of the Department's roles and the new reporting framework
4. Analysis of performance for Outcome 1
5. Analysis of performance for Outcome 2
6. Analysis of performance for Outcome 3
8. Management and accountability
9. External scrutiny and legal matters affecting the Department
A2. Occupational health and safety
A4. Payments to advertising and market research organisations
A6. Performance against actual results against outcomes and outputs
The demands currently placed on the education and training system are changing significantly. As knowledge explodes, globalisation becomes entrenched and communications technologies become pervasive, the challenge for education and training systems is not simply to ensure that delivery mechanisms are updated. An altogether larger challenge is to ensure that the education and training system encourages attitudes and skills which will support and sustain lifelong learning in its truest sense.
For a country such as Australia, lifelong learning and economic renewal together are the cornerstone to ensuring that Australian industry remains at the high wage, high value-added end of the spectrum and that Australian society remains inclusive and vibrant. A country such as ours needs continually to reposition itself in the global ‘economic space’. This requires an adaptable workforce, creativity, a strong research culture and the capacity to commercialise good ideas, build strong relationships with customers and suppliers and communicate effectively in world markets. Both individuals and our institutions need the capacity to learn - individually and from each other - if we are to do this job effectively. That is why the Department’s vision is
Excellence in helping all Australians achieve in a learning society.
In pursuing this vision the portfolio has a leadership role in advancing debate about what the education and training system should seek to achieve, in promoting greater accountability for outcomes actually achieved and in promoting regulatory and funding arrangements which encourage the necessary change. In pursuing this vision, moreover, the portfolio works with and through other agencies, other levels of government, school systems, education and training providers including TAFE colleges and universities and industry, community-based and privately-owned suppliers of services.
The last four years have seen very significant change. Not only has the Department sought to come to grips with the changes needed to the education and training system to secure the future of Australian society, it has also been making the transition from an organisation mainly dedicated to the delivery of services (formerly through the Commonwealth Employment Service) to one whose core business is policy advising and making arrangements for others to supply services or deliver programmes.
This year’s Annual Report is the first to appear in an outcomes - outputs format, completing the cycle begun last year. The structure of performance reporting in our Portfolio Budget Statements and Annual Report reflects the nature of the shared responsibility which governments across Australia have in respect of education and training. Performance information is reported in this document in two different ways. Contextual background and information which bears on an assessment of the outcomes achieved by the education and training system overall is reported this year in Chapter 3. Measures which more nearly reflect the direct responsibility of the Department are reported against each outcome in Chapters 4, 5 and 6 and Appendix 6.
With contractual and performance information reported elsewhere, this overview discusses the evolving policy framework in 1999-2000 and the associated accountability and management challenges.
The policy framework
The implications of a commitment to lifelong learning for policy making are still evolving in the advanced economies. Nonetheless it is clear that amongst the fundamental preconditions for lifelong learning are robust, high quality initial education; flexible and responsive arrangements for post-school education and training; an environment which supports the participation of the young (and, as required, the not-so-young) in education and training and high quality research and innovation cultures.
Education standards - at all levels of the education system - are the foundation stone for lifelong learning and have been a major focus for the portfolio for some years. A major issue this year, particularly in relation to schooling, has been to move beyond the phase of defining the standards sought, to improving reporting and accountability for outcomes.
The National Goals of Schooling were agreed between Australian governments in April 1999. They are being progressively supported by the development of performance measures for national reporting across a number of key areas agreed by Ministers, including literacy, numeracy, science, information technology, and enterprise education. Progress has been made in defining and assessing performance against benchmarks in most areas. National reporting began in early 2000 in respect of Year 3 reading, with a broader range of literacy-related data to be published later this year. Legislation is before the Parliament to put national reporting of education outcomes onto a more secure footing.
New quality assurance arrangements have been promulgated for both higher education and vocational education and training. These arrangements have been progressed in collaboration with States and Territories. In the case of the higher education sector, this has included revised funding arrangements in respect of research and research training which strengthen the focus on outcomes achieved and the establishment of the Australian Universities Quality Agency and Commonwealth, State and Territory agreement to a set of National Protocols for Higher Education Approval Processes.
The vocational education and training system has been substantially reformed in recent years to improve flexibility and relevance and to extend access to good, portable qualifications across a broader range of industries. The Commonwealth is pursuing strengthened accountability arrangements with the States for the implementation of the agreed reforms, including through the renegotiation of the Australian National Training Authority Agreement. The industry players involved in the National Skills Initiative have made a commitment to take the lead in helping to reverse apparent skill shortages in some industries.
The Government’s White Paper Knowledge and Innovation also proposed revised arrangements concerning the role and functions of the Australian Research Council and the programmes which it manages to support Australian research and researchers. The changes take effect from 2001 and support excellence in research and closer links between university-based research and the national innovation cycle. The Department has also played an active role in the Innovation Summit Implementation Group, formed as a result of the Innovation Summit organised by the Business Council of Australia and the Commonwealth Government early in 2000.
Measures to improve learning outcomes and the participation of Indigenous students received renewed emphasis including through the launch of the National Indigenous Literacy and Numeracy Strategy by the Prime Minister on 29 March 2000. School-based research demonstrating what works in teaching Indigenous students has been widely disseminated and provides a major underpinning for this strategy. Sharper accountability for expenditure of Commonwealth funds has been incorporated in new reporting requirements against outcomes achieved for Indigenous students. This relates to both general reporting and reporting against programmes directed specifically at the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Work has also progressed during the year to support parent choice of school through revised funding arrangements for non-government schools. The revised arrangements were announced in the 1999-2000 budget to take effect from the beginning of the next quadrennium in 2001.
The Department, in collaboration with the Department of Family and Community Services, has actively supported the work of the Prime Minister’s Youth Pathways Action Plan Taskforce, a cross-disciplinary community-led group established to take a holistic look at the pathways available to young people through the education and training system and on to adult life. The Taskforce’s report is imminent. In advance of this work, however, the Department has led a project to improve on-line information to guide career choice and measures to facilitate and recognise the development and participation of young people in Australian life. The Voices of Youth initiatives, including the National Youth Roundtables, the National Youth Media Awards and the National Youth Development Strategy are manifestations of these.
The Government has also moved to strengthen the regulation of education and training services provided in Australia to international students. Quality assurance is a key issue here; so too is protecting the interests of the international students and sustaining public confidence in the administration of student visas. The principal responsibility for the regulation of providers of education services to overseas students rests with the States and Territories. However new Commonwealth legislation has been developed to strengthen the transparency of the performance of the Federal and other jurisdictions and to address perceived deficiencies.
The Department has also successfully administered a number of programmes which are delivered more directly to clients, a number of which are designed to strengthen the attachment of young people to learning or to smooth their transition to post-school environments. These include Green Corps, the Jobs Pathway Programme and the Job Placement, Employment and Training programme. Delivery of the Jobs Pathway Programme and the Job Placement, Employment and Training programme has been refined, with improved arrangements reflected in new contracts supported by Internet-based management information facilitating improved monitoring of performance. Performance measures are reported in Chapter 5 and Appendix 6. The Department also assumed full responsibility this year for the management of the New Apprenticeships Support Services contracts under the second round contracts which commenced on 1 December 1999. The first round had been managed since the Administrative Arrangements Order changes of 1998 by the Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business as part of the Job Network. The new contracts, awarded following a competitive tender process, contain a stronger accountability framework supported by more systematic monitoring and a better developed approach to risk management.
Internal management
As previously noted, the Department has been making the transition from a service delivery organisation to one whose core business is policy advising and making arrangements for others to supply services or deliver programmes.
While the full implications of the demands of the lifelong learning agenda are still emerging, the lead times are long in education and training and the consequences for the education and training system are long-lived. A major initiative over the year past, therefore, was to ask what kinds of organisational capabilities are required by a policy funding and regulatory body such as DETYA in the context of the demands of modern society and our wish to pursue excellence in helping all Australians to achieve in a learning society.
The Department’s corporate direction is set out in our Corporate Plan, last reviewed in 1999. Shorter term priorities are assessed each year, in consultation with the Minister, and reflected in business plans for each work unit and, ultimately, the performance agreements of individuals. An organisational capabilities project has supplemented these planning processes by asking what kinds of capabilities and skills the Department needs to develop and/or acquire over the course of the next five years or so in order to deliver our business plans as the external environment changes. These are not capabilities that every individual needs personally. Rather these capabilities are those which the Department as a whole must nurture and exploit if it is to identify and deal with emerging issues in a timely manner.
Five capabilities were identified, as follows:
- understand, which includes a technical understanding of the policy issues, an awareness of the needs of our society and an ability to analyse and interpret the world around us;
- anticipate, which includes thinking about the future and acting proactively, taking a long-term view and rehearsing possible futures so that we can be confident that education and training policies are robust and can cope with continuous change in the external environment;
- create, which includes finding new approaches to solving problems, collaborating, coordinating and communicating;
- influence, which includes being known for our contribution to national policy debates as well as for being persuasive in our advocacy to Ministers and others; and
- implement, which includes using standard management tools to achieve outcomes, manage risks etc. in an accountable public sector environment.
Further work is required to properly scope some of the demands of such a set of capabilities. A particular issue is how best to address the anticipate capability. For example, the twelve years that most children take to complete their initial education needs to provide an adequate foundation for the subsequent decades of their working life and learning experience. This suggests that the focus of the education and training system should be at least ten to fifteen years out and not simply on the present day. While a number of avenues are being explored to promote a longer term focus to our thinking - such as our invited speaker series, research agenda and the DETYA Fellows - this remains a challenge for us and, arguably, for all involved in education and training.
The Department comfortably managed the transition to the GST and Y2K passed without major incident. This reflected well on the capacity which has been built up to manage complex projects in a cross-departmental environment. We look to build on that capability.
Risk management was given particular attention this year. Long-standing requirements to establish risk and fraud control plans at a programme level were supplemented this year by higher level processes to identify and manage risks at divisional and corporate level. These plans are to be reviewed at least annually to ensure their currency. As noted previously programme monitoring has received renewed attention in a number of cases.
Partnerships are an important component of how the Department works. As the role of the Department has changed, a particularly important partnership is that between policy advisers in National Office and our monitoring support structures in the States. The business partnership agreements between National Programme Managers and State Offices have been reviewed and improved so as to clarify what is required and improve accountability.
Staff Survey results show that the work of recent years to improve business planning, strengthen internal communication, and facilitate feedback on work performance and career development options is paying off. SES officers have participated in a values-based approach to 3600 feedback as well as traditional performance-related feedback for several years. Special attention was paid to extending individual performance management to all levels in the Department in 1999-2000 and it is intended to further improve the quality of feedback provided in the year ahead.
For the year ahead
For the year ahead the policy agenda remains full across all sectors, with continuing emphasis on clear standards, high quality outcomes and transparent reporting of performance. This will also remain an internal management theme as we seek to improve performance management and build organisational capability through staff development and recruitment.