Most people erroneously think we are necessarily waiting for Brad Orgill to give us insights into the magnitude of the problem.

Interestingly, the Commonwealth Auditor-General asked school principals whether they thought they were getting value for money at their school, and fewer than half nationally were estimated to agree or strongly agree!

Below are the stratified-sample answers that fell into the remaining categories (p 192 http://www.anao.gov.au/uploads/documents/2009-10_Audit_Report_33.pdf)

The use of BER P21 money for my
school represents value for money.
[n = 610]

Neither Agree nor Disagree 16.8%
Disagree 16.1%
Strongly Disagree 12.8%
Don’t Know/Can’t Say 5.7%

The obvious question is where have problems been the worst.

The investigations undertaken by The Australian and the refusal of some public school principals in New South Wales particularly to be intimidated have made it clear that there have been some colossal BER rip-offs in that state. What about Queensland and Victoria?

That’s the sort of information one would have expected in a thorough assessment of principals’ views, even though the Commonwealth Auditor-General can’t inquire into state and territory instrumentalities’ activities.

Separate estimates for each of the public/Catholic/Independent sectors and then further ones about at least the biggest states (possibly collapsing some categories if sample numbers became too small) if, as expected from subsequent evidence, only the public systems stood out as unsatisfactory.

What do we instead find in the ANAO report at paragraphs 7.25 – 7.29 on pp 163-5?

In Figure 7.9 on p 164, only separate estimates mysteriously presented in terms of whether My school system/Education Authority or My school commissioned the design, even though a footnote on the previous page made it clear how different the public and Catholic sectors were in this regard! And there’s an apparent acceptance of the nonsense state bureaucracies tried to peddle about having higher standards. A rather timid whitewash, somewhat unusual for Auditors-General who tend to take their independence seriously.

Suitably spurred, now that principals’ views of dissatisfaction have been corroborated through some indicative average cost metrics, the Auditor-General could present much more useful summary material fairly quickly.

Indeed, after apologising for the earlier misjudgement, he could also undertake a closer examination of the full run of 2,300 replies from public schools to tentatively identify geographical regions in which problems appeared to be worst, or alternatively report roughly the same level of dissatisfaction uniformly throughout jurisdictions.

One wonders whether the Prime Minister’s charmed life in this monumental mismanagement will continue throughout the campaign, or whether the Gillard gloss will prove wanting under the first bit of methodical scrutiny.