By Angela Dorizas
The Federal Government has announced the formation of a new taskforce to further investigate alleged waste in the $16.2 billion Building the Education Revolution (BER) scheme.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education, Julia Gillard, said the taskforce will be led by Brad Orgill, former UBS Investment Bank Australasia chairman and chief executive officer.
It will have an initial budget of $14 million and employ or contract investigators with expertise in building, design construction and safety, quantity surveying, architecture, financial audit and law.
Ms Gillard said investigations to date had not uncovered any widespread practices of over quoting, over charging or fraudulent or corrupt behaviour in the school infrastructure program.
Moratorium on NAPLAN tests
Ms Gillard has condemned a decision by the Australian Education Union (AEU) to impose a moratorium on the national literacy and numeracy (NAPLAN) tests.
The AEU federal executive voted on Monday to boycott the tests in a show of protest against the My School website.
AEU federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said the national tests would not go ahead in May unless the Government addresses concerns about the misuse of student data to create league tables.
“Teachers cannot hand out the tests until something is done to stop the results being used to publicly brand students and schools as failures in league tables,” he said.
“We also have serious concerns that the NAPLAN results are being used on the My School website in a way that is misleading for parents.”
The Government is determined that the tests will go ahead and has suggested that parents could supervise the exams.
New South Wales Education Minister Verity Firth said the AEU’s decision was “extremely disappointing” and urged the Teachers Federation to vote against the boycott.
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