There is very little wrong with schooling, or even universities, that could not be solved by gutting bureaucracies. Despite the fact our politicians are unwilling to state this, teachers and parents alike know it to be true.

Schooling requires very little bureaucracy, as there are few economies of scale in the administration of education. Independent schools manage just fine with lean administration teams where efficiency is a must – this should be encouraged.

It shouldn’t be accepted that waste, fraud, and abuse are inevitable in education. Taxpayers deserve value, parents deserve respect, and most importantly, our children deserve better.

So, what do all these government education bureaucracies do? The most obvious thing they do is consume resources… Creating and enforcing meaningless policies takes time.

One of the benefits of decentralising schooling is that it enables teachers to be paid what they are actually worth and currently being denied: at least 25 per cent more per year. This is confirmed by research commissioned by the Teachers Professional Association of Australia (TPAA) which shows pay rises of $23-62k per year are achievable with no additional expense to the taxpayer.

The next most obvious thing education bureaucracies do is capture government ministers. They parade themselves as the agents of the minister, carefully controlling the flow of information to the government. Most egregiously, out-of-touch bureaucracies are the vehicles for policies that the education minister might undertake.

Central administrations of universities do exactly the same with vice-chancellors.

Of course, the most detestable thing that education bureaucracies do is make life worse for teachers. This goes far beyond having first dibs on the funding that should otherwise go to paying teachers – appalling as that is. Education bureaucracies increase administrative burdens and undermine the professional standing, authority, and responsibility of teachers, seeking to replace it with a rampant managerialism.

Again, central administrations of universities treat academics the same way.

The claim of authority that bureaucracies make is precisely that they are superior decision-makers, that their control is required to make things better. That teacher and academic professionalism has to be managed by bureaucrats.

The chances that such managerial imperialism will actually make things better for teachers, academics, and students is remote. Why? Because the incentives are so poor. As long as whatever the bureaucrats do has good intentions – and the intentions are always wonderful – any failures fall on teachers and students, not on the insulated-from-consequences bureaucrats.

And it is on for young and old. We now have school systems, on which billions of dollars are spent, yet alarming numbers of students fail to achieve satisfactory levels of literacy and numeracy.

There is a view that with bureaucracies you can simply set and forget. This is not true. Bureaucracies evolve. They metastasise into every area they have the slightest access to.

Put simply, the more resources a bureaucracy consumes, the better for the bureaucrats. They hoard authority, control information flows and always evade accountability.

Bureaucracies have a strong tendency to go for one-size-fits-all patterns, as such an approach simplifies things for bureaucrats and extends their authority and reach. They aren’t governed by what’s best for those they exist to serve, but rather by whatever benefits them most.

The more they capture ministers (and vice-chancellors) through the claim to be their agents, the more these tendencies will manifest.

We, the Australian people, are the ones that suffer. Stuck with inefficient ‘public servants’, our hard-earned money is poured into paralysing the governments we elect.

The revelations from the activities of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the United States, and the frustrations of the Starmer government in the United Kingdom with an unresponsive Civil Service, are very much in line with this pattern. As Australians, we’ve quietly struggled, not daring to question our entrenched trust in the public service.

Take this election campaign for example. The Opposition Leader was forced to U-turn on proposed cuts to the public service due to the unpopularity of the decision with voters. It’s a sad indictment on our country that, as Australians, we shirk our duty to hold our ‘public servants’ to account.

Deeply ingrained in our public psyche is the belief that government funding is all the same, whether it reaches frontline workers or not. We rightly believe that health and education services are absolutely critical, but don’t seem that bothered by the fact that funding is absorbed by unelected, inefficient bureaucrats. This is regrettable and serves us extremely poorly.

But one thing we do know, is that corruption takes many forms. DOGE has testified to this. It is eye-watering, and quite frankly abhorrent, just how much astroturfed activism is funded by the US taxpayers – and just how embedded it is in government bureaucracies. The uncovering of this treachery has left many asking: Should we be being doing something similar here?

There is an alarming number of decisions being made by people who are so far removed from the consequences. This problem afflicts our education courses at university, where lecturers are even more insulated from consequences than bureaucrats.

Both the Grattan Institute and the Centre for Independent Studies have highlighted the frightful state of university education courses. Make no mistake, this is where inefficiency breeds. Education degrees include an immense amount of social and political activism, whilst simultaneously neglecting their primary purpose – preparing teachers to teach.

Any teacher will tell you, the key to mastering the classroom is learning the craft. This is why the peak representative bodies like the TPAA propose three-year teaching degrees comprised of one year of theory and two years paid placement. Real-life experience is what learning teachers need. This is just one of the major reforms needed to fix the education system.

Very clearly, education is broken. Fixing it only becomes possible by ripping control away from those who tore it down – governments and bureaucrats – and restoring power back to local schooling communities.

It’s time to Go Local.

Edward Schuller is the National Secretary of the TPAA and the Victoria State Director of Red Union.