Why Jason Clare's new education super agency is flawed. Here are eight glaring problems

By Scott Prasser

CANBERRA TIMES September 23 2025

Federal Education Minister, Jason Clare, has announced a major reorganisation of the Commonwealth's school education architecture amalgamating four current, separate federal bodies into a "super agency", the new statutory Teaching and Learning Commission.

Being brought together is the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA); the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership School Leadership (AITSL); Education Services Australia (ESA) and the 2020 formed Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) will all be brought together.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare. Picture by Gary Ramage

The new commission is an addition to the existing Commonwealth Department of Education and the statutorily based federal National Schools Resourcing Board (NSRB) that advises on school funding issues.

There are several problems with this new arrangement.

Firstly, the Minister has not clarified exactly the problem these changes are addressing. Seeking to "improve co-ordination" and reducing overlap between agencies is good management speak, but are process issues not policy outcome goals.

Amalgamations rarely resolve such problems and often create new problems as different disparate organisations try to work together.

Second, these four organisations do different things. ACARA does curriculum and NAPLAN; AITSL focuses on teacher professional standards; ESA looks after technology for schools; and AERO seeks and disseminates evidence to improve education outcomes. In other words, they are not a single fit.

Third, these bodies are different in purpose and in governance reflecting their varied roles. ACARA is necessarily a joint federal-state representative body and funded as such. AITSL is under the federal minister's control but interacts well.

ESA is client-oriented, and AERO independently researches evidence gaps. Therefore, one organisational model cannot fit all.

Fourth, having overlap between education agencies is not necessarily bad.

Education evidence is diverse and often ambiguous. Knowing those differences is essential for developing good policy. Submerging AERO, for instance, into this one structure means it will run by the same executive and board as the rest of federal education clique and lose its independence in informing us about the evidence of what works to improve education performance.

Fifth, none of these organisations are big. That is their virtue. This gives them agility and flexibility in what and how they do it. Creating one big unit means hierarchy, structure, processes and centralisation of functions, stifles innovation and rarely gives efficiency savings.

Sixth, if the minister wanted to bring schools policy "under one roof" then why not just give it all to the Department of Education and be done with it?

Creating another statutory body seems contradictory to the goal of reducing duplication.

Seventh, establishing this new body will all take time, so expect a loss of functionality and policy continuity. How will the states and other education providers input into this new blended body?

Lastly, the minister has said the new body will "oversee and drive the reforms we are making to initial teaching education." How? Accreditation of teachers and university courses lies in the hands of state government agencies.

Isn't the elephant in the room, that should be addressed, is establishing at last in Australia, a single national teacher accreditation body, as in other professions, instead of the many state and territory accrediting bodies?

Would not this be better than creating another multilayered bureaucracy in Canberraland?

The last review of initial teacher education (ITE) although "mindful of the complex ITE landscape" and acknowledging "there is no single body or government with the sole responsibility or accountability for ITE", eschewed proposing "a national accreditation model".

Instead, it opted for "strengthened oversight and governance arrangements for ITE programs" - the same softly, softly, hands off approach pursued for the last decade that has led to very same problems about ITE identified in that report.

Mr Clare should scrap his super agency. It will have no impact on improving education quality, cost much and waste time. Instead, retain AITSL, the only agency outside the department, to which the federal minister can give unilateral instructions, and make it the national accreditation body.

Afterall, it presently does just almost everything else about teacher standards except that one, important task of national accreditation.

Meanwhile, Mr Clare should attend to existing federal education bodies and release the NSRB's 2024 annual review of state and territory compliance on school funding that was due last April and appoint a new chair of the NSRB that has been vacant for two years.