Innovation is not welcome in NSW Public Schools … NSW Bureaucracy Wins the Day - REA

OVER the past 17 years Re-Engineering Australia Foundation, a Not-For-Profit Social Enterprise, has been implementing Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths (STEM) activities into schools across Australia with great success.

In NSW alone, with the support of industry, REA has provided over $50 Million dollars of cash, hard technologies, software and in-kind services into NSW Public Schools. Unfortunately for NSW Public Schools this provision of technology and funding now has to come to an end.

REA is no longer permitted to supply any of the technology associated with its STEM programs into NSW Public schools due to bureaucratic processes into which REA does not fit.

The NSW Education bureaucracy do things their way … the way they have done them forever ... and you dare not attempt to change them, or be innovative … because you run the risk of facing their wrath.

The unfortunate inference for NSW Public Schools is that
“Innovation is not welcome”.

“Bureaucracy is a negative force that inhibits and often prohibits innovation. Bureaucracies are organizations that are designed to maintain the status quo and they do so by rules, regulations, manuals, performance evaluations, a pyramid organization structure of power, and a huge resistance to Innovation”. Global Innovation Foundation.

The term "bureaucracy" is French in origin, and combines the French word bureau – desk or office – with the Greek word κράτος kratos – rule or political power. More than 60 years ago, Max Weber declared bureaucracy to be “the most rational known means of carrying out imperative control over human beings.” He was right. Bureaucracy is the technology of control.

“Organisations that are creating immense value and game-changing new platforms are those who have effectively sidelined bureaucracy in favour of a new way of working.” Andy Lark at Australian innovation leader, Xero Software.

After continued attempts (22 at last count) to at least have a discussion with the NSW Minister for Education, Hon Adrian Piccoli MP, on the topic of REA’s STEM activities, and its approach to supplying STEM technology into schools, our requests have fallen on deaf ears. The Minister through his office has again refused to meet and has confirmed the ban imposed on REA by the bureaucrats within the NSW Education Department.

REA is banned (their words) from supplying any of the technology we uses in our STEM programs into NSW public schools. It is our understanding that this ban on REA will remain in place for at least the coming 3 years.

Because we are different!

Because we are different … successfully … are creating a paradigm shift in STEM education … changing the way industry works with schools to develop STEM educational outcomes … and because we are suggesting innovative ways to work with Governments … we have been banned ... rather than listened too. This highlights a systemic failure by the NSW Government to consider innovative solutions which question bureaucratic process and provide more value for money solution to the people of NSW.

REA’s only option is to re-focus its NSW efforts on building STEM capabilities in Independent Schools and in Public & Independent schools across the rest of Australia where our programs are growing from strength to strength.

REA will continue to support those NSW Public Schools already engaged in F1 in School, where possible, but our support will be limited both financially and by the restrictions placed upon us. All of the cash and support we receive from Industry in NSW will now be directed to independent schools.

By way of example of our dilemma: REA is today working with industry to finalise the last of the funding needed to implement  $70,000 of STEM technology into an independent school in Coffs Harbour – free to the school. This will be the first of many STEM Technology Hubs REA plans to implement into on the north coast of NSW. Unfortunately we are not allowed to provide this technology into NSW Public Schools, even though its free to the school.

Independent schools have no such blockages because innovation is alive and well in the Independent schools system, as it is in the other States of Australia.

With STEM education high on the agenda of every developed nation ... and being recognised in the recent budget speeches by both sides of Federal politics, it is difficult to understand the approach of NSW Education. We can only hope that something will change in the future and that the NSW Public Education system will open up a dialog to include innovative approaches to the implementation of STEM education and STEM technology. Until it does the NSW Public Education system will continue to be held back by bureaucracy and will continue to fall behind the rest of the nation and the rest of the world, in STEM education ... if not all subjects.

REA will continue to argue the case for sensible communication on this topic with the NSW Government.

www.rea.org.au

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