NSW Auditor-General slams bush school strategy over lack of transparency, record-keeping

Education Minister Prue Car has responded to a brutal assessment of her predecessors’ plan to improve the quality of education in regional and remote areas. Here’s what she plans to do next.

A damning report by the NSW Auditor-General has exposed the education divide between kids in the cities and the bush, and slammed the failure of a decade of government policies to address the crisis.

In her brutal assessment of the 2021-2024 Rural and Remote Education Strategy, the NSW Auditor-General found that the then-government’s policy has failed to achieve anything for the 45 per cent of regional students who aren’t meeting NAPLAN standards.

Instead of implementing new initiatives to improve educational opportunities outside the cities, the Education Department “relied on matching existing programs and activities across its business areas” to meet its ‘equity’ commitments.

The department also “did not take on board lessons learned” from previous failures and “did not provide additional resources” to achieve the strategy’s goals.

Education Minister Prue Car has tasked the highest-level bureaucrats within the education department to find immediate solutions to close the educational gap in response to the “scathing” audit.

Goodooga Central School in remote northern NSW. Picture: Toby Zerna

“I have tasked senior Education Department officials … to look at ways that we can immediately get some deliverables to turn around some of our challenges in rural and remote and regional areas,” she said.

“I’ve tasked the Secretary of Education himself … with coming up with practical ways to do something about rural and remote and regional education.

It will be up to Education Minister Prue Car to decide whether to implement the NSW Auditor-General’s recommendations. Picture: NCA NewsWire

“The time for announcing strategies is over – we just need to get the work done.”

The report also found that the government was clueless as to whether any of its initiatives actually worked, because “the department did not … set baseline measures or develop an evaluation plan to assess the impact of the strategy”.

“Consequently, it has not adequately monitored changes in access or outcomes for regional, rural and remote students.”

Ms Car said her government will report on its progress in bush communities, and said she is “more than happy to keep the teachers and the parents and the students of rural and regional and remote New South Wales informed”.

NSW Auditor-General Margaret Crawford has given the new government 12 months to turn the ship around, recommending the education department review the financial resources provided to regional, rural and remote areas, and design a new strategy that includes consistent data collection and routine public reporting of its progress.

“Communicating publicly on the progress of strategy actions and the outcomes they have achieved is important for transparency and public accountability.”

Just over half of remote and very remote students achieved the national minimum standards for reading and maths in 2022, and there were more than 900 teacher vacancies in regional areas as of January this year.

Acting president of the NSW Teachers Federation Henry Rajendra said the audit’s findings are the “bitter harvest of more than a decade of neglect”.

“The Minns government has no time to waste. It must revive and honour the agreement it had to tackle the teacher shortage, by paying teachers what they are worth,” he said.