Dawkins parachutes into revolution number 2

It’s been more than 20 years between drinks, but John Dawkins will command a key post in the new higher education revolution. Earlier this month the country’s education and training ministers decided to temporarily retain the services of the doomed Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA), after the timetable for the establishment of its replacement – the new higher education regulator, TEQSA – had blown out. Now there are indications of something similar happening in VET. Two bodies slated for extinction – the National Audit and Registration Authority (NARA) and the National Quality Council (NQC), both subsidiaries of TVET Australia – appear to have been thrown a lifeline, as the government struggles with the challenge of establishing new regulatory bodies from scratch. And John Dawkins, the former federal education minister who presided over the last higher education revolution, will be at the helm. Current education minister Julia Gillard last week announced Dawkins’s appointment as chair of both the NQC and TVET. She said Dawkins was “well qualified” to guide the NQC. But the problem is that the NQC – along with NARA – was defunded in the May budget, with $16 million redirected to offset the cost of establishing the new national VET regulator. “The functions of these two agencies will be subsumed by the new national regulator,” budget papers said. The new national regulatory arrangements involve two bodies – a regulator that is slated to begin operations next April, and a national standards council that is supposed to operate from January. The budget papers say that the national standards council “will undertake functions currently performed by the NQC”. But commentators say it’s unlikely that Dawkins – after almost two decades out of the policy spotlight – would hitch his wagon to an agency with a shelf life of just six months. The implication is that the NQC will evolve into the new standards body, rather than being subsumed. Gillard’s statement last week gave weight to this theory. “The NQC will be central to the rollout of our reforms in the vocational education sector, which includes significant improvements to quality and transparency,” she said. And sources say the same thing is likely to happen with NARA. NARA regulates colleges and enterprise RTOs that operate across state borders. Training industry figures have pressed NARA’s case as a logical contender to take on the national VET regulator’s role. But the government has rejected this idea because NARA’s parent, TVET, is a ministerial company while the new regulator – by agreement of the Commonwealth, states and territories – must be a statutory authority (CR, 27.04.10). Commentators say it would be much easier to change NARA’s governance arrangements and install it as the new national VET regulator, than to create a whole new regulator from scratch. The appointment of Dawkins as TVET chair suggests the government may now agree. The future of TVET had looked bleak with the announcement of the disbandment of NARA and the NQC. While TVET has other functions – it runs a training products section and supports the National VET Equity Advisory Council and the Flexible Learning Advisory Group – there were questions whether these roles were enough to justify its continued existence. But there were also questions whether the sector could afford to lose its experience – concerns echoed by Gillard’s office. “We don’t intend on losing valuable expertise and guidance in the development of this new regulator,” a spokesperson told Campus Review. Associate Professor Leesa Wheelahan, of the University of Melbourne, said it made sense to adapt an existing model rather than scrap it. “We saw huge problems under the Howard government when they got rid of ANTA [the Australian National Training Authority],” she said. Wheelahan said that although she had been a vocal critic of ANTA, when all its functions were subsumed by the federal education department, all the institutional and corporate memory was lost. “That was disastrous – it really narrowed the focus of VET. That’s a lesson the government should learn.” Gillard’s office and TVET declined to comment on whether the two TVET subsidiaries would take on the mantle of the new regulatory bodies. Dawkins told CR that the new regulator and standards council would “assume the functions” of NARA and the NQC respectively, with the national standards council also taking on additional responsibilities. Dawkins said the membership of the national standards council was being considered by the Ministerial Council for Tertiary Education and Employment (MCTEE). “I understand that the continuing scope of TVET will be subject to further ministerial consideration,” he added. Sources suggest that the NQC will in fact be rebadged as the national standards council and enlarged to cope with its expanded duties – setting the standards for VET quality assurance, performance monitoring, reporting, risk and audit, as well as the registration and reregistration of providers and the accreditation of qualifications. CR also understands that the council’s governance arrangements will be transformed, with its board comprised of VET experts – Gillard’s preferred modus operandi – rather than representatives of government and industry bodies. And it is expected that NARA, as the new national regulator, may be headquartered in Sydney – even though its higher education equivalent, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, is to be based in Melbourne. If so, this will displease commentators who believe VET and higher education regulatory arrangements should be harmonised as much as possible to assist in their eventual merger. But locating its head office in Melbourne would be not lacking in irony, given that Victoria has opted out of the national VET regulatory arrangements. It’s up periscope – slowly. Dawkins steps back into the fray In the late 1980s, John Dawkins transformed Australia’s higher education system, with a huge expansion in student places and the elimination of the “binary divide” between universities and colleges of advanced education (CAEs), partially funded through the introduction of HECS. He went on to become Treasurer under Paul Keating, before resigning abruptly in 1993 over federal cabinet resistance to his economic reform program. Since then, he’s kept a low profile, with few public appearances or comments. But he’s maintained his interest in education and training reform issues, working with governments in Australia and overseas as well as universities, UNESCO and the World Bank. He became chair of the board of governors of the Institute for International Trade at the University of Adelaide. And in mid-2008, he was appointed chair of the new Australian Qualifications Framework Council, which advises education and training ministers on the AQF’s development. In March last year, education minister Julia Gillard gave Dawkins a direct role in her own education revolution – specifically, the integration of higher education and VET into a more streamlined tertiary sector. She commissioned the AQFC “to improve the articulation and connectivity between the university and VET sectors, to enable competency-based and merit-based systems to become more student-focused”. Now, as National Quality Council chair, Dawkins will be at the helm of the body “tasked with ensuring all VET students receive a quality education that will help them secure a good job and help this nation grow smarter, stronger and fairer”. Dawkins has a reputation as a sharp intellect and straight talker who doesn’t suffer fools – handy qualities as he battles to restore respectability and coherence in a sector that’s been scandalised by dodgy colleges and marginalised by jurisdictional differences.