Page 927 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 March 1990
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Mrs Grassby: Did you ask me to shut up, Bill?
MR STEFANIAK: No, I would not do that.
Mrs Grassby: I would do it for you, Bill.
MR STEFANIAK: Thank you. I should start that again.
Mrs Grassby: He is much nicer than anybody else. You are cuddlier, are you not, Bill? You are much cuddlier.
MR STEFANIAK: That is right, Ellnor. I had better go back. The department can do this by working to provide the best possible service to its clients and by learning for the service movement - from the worldwide preoccupation of highly successful organisations with the quality of service that they provide, their increasing commitment to the notion of customer-driven organisation and the realisation, even in businesses which have not previously thought of themselves as service organisations, that success is no longer determined simply by product.
In the case of the Department of Education, the "customers" are the students, parents, employers and the public in general. Parents and students are also active partners in the educative process. For the department, "service" is the provision of tangible products in general, about delivery, responsiveness, empathy and relationships. "Product", for the department, means the education program that is delivered to students. The term "culture of service" is important. It has to do with a culture which has a clear focus on serving students and parents, and is a guiding force which says, in the department's case, that students and their parents come first and that every aspect of the organisation is arranged in ways that will serve them best. The whole idea of a service culture, a customer-driven education system, has enormous ramifications for all concerned with public education. It does not just begin and end in the schools. Its implications reach into every part of the total education system - from preschools, schools and colleges to all the divisions, branches and sections of the office of the department and to every level of the organisation.
MR MOORE (9.17): I am so delighted that I stayed seated and allowed Mr Stefaniak to speak about culture of service because it is the page that I have tagged in the annual report and the only part of the annual report to which I was intending to refer. I could not disagree more strongly with almost everything that Mr Stefaniak had to say. "What is culture of service?" is a question that he asked, rhetorically, and he proceeded to answer it in terms of clients, the public in general, parents and students being customers.
This culture of service represents a strong move away from a system of educationalists and parents in partnership. A
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