Literacy program a $322m failure

JULIA Gillard's education policy aimed at lifting national literacy and numeracy standards has failed to produce improvements.

JULIA Gillard's signature education policy aimed at lifting national literacy and numeracy standards has failed to produce any improvements after three years and $322 million in public spending.

The findings are contained in an Australian National Audit Office report that also identifies the commonwealth's failure to create a mechanism to monitor whether states were delivering on undertakings made to qualify for a share of extra federal money.

And, despite the Prime Minister's often-espoused commitment to publishing outcomes of government programs so the public could judge progress, Auditor-General Ian McPhee has found that a website on the national partnership on literacy and numeracy promised three years ago has not been created.

While Tony Abbott seized on the audit office's bleak assessment yesterday to declare Ms Gillard a bungling incompetent, the Prime Minister won backing from Australian Education Union national president Angelo Gavrielatos.

He said that despite the audit report's findings principals, parents and teachers believed the program had been a great success.

Ms Gillard's four-year $534m literacy and numeracy partnership was designed in 2008, when she was education minister.

It was to target the collective resources of the commonwealth and the states to deliver sustained improvement in literacy and numeracy standards, particularly among indigenous children.

Under the plan, the commonwealth agreed to give the states more funding for education provided they invested in accordance with agreed policy aims.

Despite reports of positive impacts in school leadership, teacher practice and student engagement, Mr McPhee was unable to find statistical evidence of improvement in the 1050 schools to have benefited from the funding.

Mr McPhee also found that, between 2008 and last year, three states -- Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania -- failed to meet the co-investments required to secure federal money.

Despite the requirement that the commonwealth satisfy itself that states were delivering agreed funding, the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations had failed to create an assessment mechanism.

The Opposition Leader said last night that Ms Gillard "yet again has been directly responsible for a bungled program with no proper checks and balances" to ensure value for money.

Mr Gavrielatos said that in a national survey conducted by the union last year, two out of three principals in schools taking part in the literacy and numeracy partnership, and another aimed at lifting disadvantage, said the funding had led to significant improvements in student outcomes.

A spokeswoman for Ms Gillard said last night the assertion that the literacy and numeracy partnership had not led to improvements was incorrect.

"The focus of the LLNP was to help students that were falling behind in schools where literacy and numeracy standards were identified to be a problem," the spokeswoman said.

"The ANAO analysis looked at average results from each school, which masks changes in results for those students with the greatest need for literacy and numeracy support.

"This misses the fact that schools that got national partnership funding were able to get more of their students to meet the minimum standards."