On the Quality of Education…

I was saddened, but not altogether surprised, to read online this week (Brisbane Times, Aug 31) that university lecturers across four states in Australia are considering a national strike that may mean that the marking of student exams is disrupted, among other outcomes. If the action proceeds then presumably some of our future members will be adversely affected, as will some existing members.

In an earlier blog entry entitled On Education I lamented that:

A decline in funding in real terms for the tertiary sector – as measured against most other OECD nations – has clearly impacted the education sector in many ways… (many) have long held concerns about access to education and on the effect that cuts in funding may have on educational quality.

Genevieve Kelly, state secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union, seems to agree with these remarks. Ms Kelly claims in the article that increased workloads, and a shift towards casual teaching and fixed-term contracts have conspired to reduce the quality of education offered to students.

Regardless of the reason for the action, the fact that the situation in Australian universities has become so untenable, and that the teachers themselves cite the poor quality of teaching at universities as being a reason for the proposed action, is regrettable. One can only hope that the standard of education is sufficient to ensure that future graduates are capable of keeping Australia globally competitive in business, and competitive in other ways.

Mr Ian Argall, executive director of the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association, is quoted in the news story as claiming that “the national approach by the union was inappropriate and did not take into account the economic circumstances of different universities.” By extension one must conclude that very different educational standards are applied by the universities too. Again, this is a concern for our profession.

Andrew Dunn responded to my earlier blog post On Education with some lengthy and insightful comments including the following (a note to devotees of this blog: Hi Mum, Hello Prime Minister, you may care to read Andrew’s comments in full, they are compelling):

While the rhetoric of teaching quality is bandied about, the truth is that teaching effectiveness is not routinely monitored, rewarded or, in cases where it is manifestly inadequate, sanctioned. Indeed, it is a little known fact that there are clauses in the enterprise agreements of several universities which specifically prohibit performance related disciplinary action being taken against faculty members on the basis of poor teaching evaluations… The notion that this territory ought be the sole domain of the universities is in my view indefensible, principally because the hard truth of the matter is that many cases, under the pressure of business and funding models which poorly serve business and accounting education, they have in many cases failed to deliver to an adequate standard – to say nothing of a world class standard (of education).

CPA Australia is of course a major supporter of universities and students and has been so for many years. We fund scholarships, award programs, academic conferences, academic bodies, research journals, a professional journal with an educational bent, individual faculties in their pursuit of excellence in teaching and research, and do myriad other things to support high quality of education in Australia and beyond. Our members have a stake in ensuring that they and their future fellow members and colleagues are taught well, and that their learning experience is world-class.

The beacon of light in all of this is that while the issue still makes the headlines there is hope. Perhaps the headlines will attract enough attention to get all parties to the table to try and ensure that the decline in the standard of education is reversed, and that our profession does not become a victim of bureaucratic folly and administrative malaise within the tertiary sector.

Congress – Our Big Annual Event

CPA Australia’s annual Congress season looms large and near. I’ve just taken some time out to scan the programs, and speaker lists, and so on that are on the CPA Australia website, and it looks like being a fantastic series of events.

The team involved in putting the show together has kindly invited me to speak at the Melbourne event, which I am delighted to be able to do. I also hope to make it along to most of (perhaps all) the other cities for part of Congress that will be held in those locations. Apart from sitting in on some of the interesting sessions, I look forward to meeting other members. After all, as a former headmaster once said to me ‘a school is made up of people, not buildings, or classes – those other things are of little consequence if the right people aren’t also inside’. I feel the same way about our Congress events – what really matters is ensuring that the right people present and attend and are participative during sessions.

Without you, the 2009 Congress season won’t be nearly as successful, meaningful, or fun. I hope to see reader’s of this blog at Congress and to have the chance of meeting you in person then.

MIA… the conference chronicle

Last week I had the pleasure of delivering a keynote address at the Malaysia Institute of Accountants (MIA) regional conference.

CPA Australia proudly sponsored the conference (a reflection of our close ties to the MIA, similar to those we have with many other professional accounting bodies around the world).

The conference theme was ’sustainability’ and I spoke on the topic from an ‘accountant’s perspective’. I imagine that my talk was far less interesting than the one that followed by an 18-year old star who was there to give the ‘younger generation’s perspective’ on sustainability and how to connect with youth on the issue. Her talk was really entertaining. The best of the conference, I thought. [As an aside, it was confronting to finally admit that I’m no longer part of the 'younger' generation… sigh, the mirror don’t lie… and my technological ineptitude marks me as being outside the Gen-Y clan. I am firmly rooted in Gen-X; this borne out by my preference for 80’s hits when I catch a moment to visit YouTube – Matt Finish, The Mentals, Goanna, Jo Jo Zep being recent hits… ].

CPA Australia board member, Christina Foo, was conference chairperson. Christina is also vice president of the MIA and champions the accounting profession in many ways. The profile of the conference, and the calibre of attendees that it attracted, is a credit to Christina and the MIA organising team. CPA Australia was given a fantastic profile at the conference and the information shared throughout the conference will surely have a lasting impact on many of the attendees.

The day after my keynote I grabbed a copy of The Borneo Post to find that the MIA conference was given a multi-page spread and that my talk on sustainability had been quite favourably reported within. My mother was chuffed when she heard. I think Borneo is now on her list of places to visit.

New member centre in Kuching

When next you are in Kuching, Sarawak, be sure to drop in and visit the CPA Australia team at the new CPA Australia Member Centre that I had the privilege of ‘opening’ last week. I was heartened, but not surprised, to find that CPA Australia has close to 400 members living in or near Kuching. Many of them seemed to be at the opening of the member centre to hear Malaysian division president Lam Kee Soon talk of plans for the Malaysian division and about the exciting future that the profession has in Malaysia. Congratulations to Audrey Danasamy, General Manager, CPA Australia Malaysian Division and our other colleagues in Malaysia on this great new step in helping members in Kuching.

Room to Read – Singapore chapter launch

Room to Read launched its Singapore chapter with “an evening of food and philanthropy” on August 5. Regular readers will know that CPA Australia joined similar events in Hong Kong in May and in Sydney in February. This time, Deputy President CPA Australia, Low Weng Keong (“Weng” to friends and colleagues) hosted a CPA Australia table that I was fortunate to be able to join.

It was a wonderful night and our friends at Room to Read were delighted with the result, which at last tally amounted to a little more than SGD 1 million raised to educate children who otherwise would have little hope of learning how to read and write and so on. I am very pleased to let you know that the CPA Australia table raised more than SGD 65,000 on the night. This included the donation of an entire school (you are one of a kind Weng!) and three libraries as well as other smaller but significant items.

The other CPA Australia members who also joined Weng’s table on the night and donated the libraries were: Chaly Mah (Divisional President, Singapore); Loh Hoon Sun (Past Divisional President, Singapore); Soh Yew Hock (Past Divisional President Singapore); Steven Lim (Councillor and Past Divisional President Singapore); Irving Low (Deputy Divisional President Singapore), Bill Bowman (Divisional Councillor Singapore); Albert Ho (Divisional Councillor Singapore); Chan Lai-Koon (General Manager, CPA Australia Singapore Division); Low Lai King (friend of CPA Australia). What a team!

Following the event, Robin Fern, Asia Development Director for Room to Read sent this message:

Once again it was wonderful to have a CPA table at our event and so actively engaged with us. In addition to the CPA libraries, and the school I wanted to let you know that we’ve received our first two donations from the CPA Flyer! They arrived today, a $500 and a $100 SGD donation. The printed brochure looks wonderful… We’ve set up an appeal to track all donations and will allocate the funds to the girls’ education program as you indicate in the brochure… It’s truly exciting to see the momentum building.

John Wood, Founder & Executive Chairman of Room to Read, added this note:

Richard, great to see you at our event… We greatly appreciate everything that you and the worldwide CPA Australia team are doing to help Room to Read to reach more kids with the lifelong gift of education. It is so greatly appreciated, and we’re excited to be working with you…

Remember: “world change starts with educated children”. As Robin and John note, CPA Australia members have already done so much to bring about this change. This is something we all share in and of which we can all be proud.

Innovating the CPA Program the Singapore way

Last week I was in Singapore to join Deputy President Low Weng Keong and others for the signing of a landmark Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Tax Academy of Singapore, the training arm of the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS).

The agreement seals the launch of the new Singapore Taxation segment which has been incorporated into the professional level of the CPA Program. It is a significant milestone and demonstrates CPA Australia’s commitment to delivering a highly valued and global designation with the capacity to specialise to meet the needs of businesses throughout the world.

Singapore is the first place in which CPA Australia is launching a local tax program and plans are in place to launch similar localised CPA Program modules in other locations including Hong Kong / China.

Chaly Mah, President of Singapore Division, CPA Australia and CEO, Deloitte Asia Pacific noted in a press release that: “In Singapore, we are very proud to be in partnership with the Tax Academy of Singapore – a regional knowledge hub that seeks to bring together local and international tax practitioners, tax administrators, researchers and academia to engage in high quality education and professional development…We are confident that our CPA Program candidates can look forward to acquiring a leading edge specialised training in the area of Singapore Taxation. This specially tailored Singapore taxation segment in the CPA Program will enable our graduates be more relevant and better prepared as they enter the workforce.”

General Manager, CPA Australia Singapore Division, Lai-Koon Chan and her team did a wonderful job in putting this agreement in place and in ensuring that appropriate ceremony was given to the occasion of the signing of the MOU. I offer my congratulations to Lai-Koon, Chaly, and all our CPA colleagues on staff and Council in Singapore who worked hard to introduce this pioneering initiative.

On education…

I’ve had reason to reflect during the past week or so on the state of education in Australia and on how it compares to education elsewhere. The fact that one of the hats I wear is an academic one won’t have escaped many of you. This gives me some insight into education policy – how it is shaped, how it might change, and how it enables or disables learning and “success”; but I’m also interested in your thoughts and perceptions on what Australia needs to do to remain a clever country. The Bradley Review of Higher Education in Australia makes some important recommendations, but does it go far enough? If the recommendations are fully implemented, will it “fix” things in the tertiary sector? What else needs to be done? One thing that we all have in common is the opportunity that education has given us. We also have in common a commitment to lifelong learning – as enshrined in our continuing professional development requirements. A decline in funding in real terms for the tertiary sector – as measured against most other OECD nations – has clearly impacted the education sector in many ways. Those of us who are the beneficiaries of a proper education and who, with knowledge and reason, fixate on the many ways in which education develops and sustains an economy have long held concerns about access to education and on the effect that cuts in funding may have on educational quality. What value do you place on the education you’ve had? Where do you see opportunities for improvement in funding and policy?

Everyone’s blogging

I note that Australia’s Prime Minister has taken to the wonderful world of blogging. I also note that it is slightly more challenging to post a comment to the PM’s blog – though I am sure to do so at some point – than it is to post one to this blog. I’m sure that this is necessary to ensure the integrity of the messages, however, and to limit the volume of pranksterish messages sent by blogging devotees.

I’m also pleased to let you know that with nearly 4 months of blogging under my belt, not one prank message has yet been received. I’m told by other bloggers that this is quite rare, to which I respond by saying that CPA Australia members have a professionalism and maturity that ensures that such behaviour isn’t part of the mix. I have of course, discounted SPAM messages – there are plenty of those inviting me to do astonishing things in remarkable ways to countless entities. (Aside: the volume of SPAM makes me wonder; how is it that so many have so much time to do so little? What happened to the harmless worm-free & viral absent days of arcade pinball that vexed my youth?).

Others might suggest that my rather-less-than-hoped-for frequency in posting messages has played a part in limiting correspondence of any kind. Rest assured that the volume of messages posted thus far by me is no indication of my passion for this blog or for CPA Australia – rather, it is an unintended consequence of having to get a whole lot of other stuff done! Nonetheless, I am committed to trying harder to up the ante in terms of message frequency.

Anyway, I thought I’d check on the “blog stats” (hipster me, eh?), and I’ve discovered that there has been approximately 10,000 views of the blog to date, and that the peak day for visitors to the blog was April 8 with 607 views in a single day. I’d like to thank my mum for 500 or so of those, and my sister for another 100 (I think I looked at the blog 4 or 5 times that day too, leaving a couple of views to other unknown friends – a hearty thanks to you too whoever you may be!).

A blow by blow, post by post, account is also given in the detailed stats, but I nodded off just looking at the tabulated matrix – so it is humbug to quote them more widely as a soporific for you, my unsuspecting readers. The upshot is that it is mighty nice to know that people are reading, if not commenting all that often.

I shall now return to the PM’s blog to see how he views the world today….

G’Day UK

Recently I attended the G’Day UK week in London. G’Day UK is modelled on the longer established G’Day USA. In broad terms, its purpose is to bring together business people, institutions, government figures, sporting identities and personalities from the entertainment industry to promote Australia and Australian interests in the UK.

CPA Australia played a prominent role in G’Day UK. This included sponsoring the main business event for the week, ‘CEO Forum’, which our CEO, Geoff Rankin, attended along with Andrew Genrich, President European Branch, and Paul Taylor, Director European Branch. [Great job that entire week Andrew and Paul – “Hi” to the team in London and many thanks for the warm welcome!].

I was invited to chair the financial services workshop held at the CEO Forum and to address the gathering more generally. Members of the workshop panel included John MacFarlane, former CEO of ANZ, and Phil Rivett, Global Leader for Financial Services, PwC. With speakers of that calibre it came as no surprise that many interesting points were made and that it was a very stimulating discussion. The workshop ended by forming much the same view that was formed in the similar session I wrote about in my State of the Nation post – more regulation, more targeted regulation, greater risk control, but, ultimately, a return to ‘business as usual’.

The Forum was a great opportunity for CPA Australia to meet with key players from a range of industries and to help them better understand that CPA Australia members are trained to be global strategic business leaders. Among these was the Honourable Richard Alston, former Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, and former Australian High Commissioner to the UK who showed a keen interest in the profession and the issues facing it. Mr Alston very helpful in ensuring that some interesting engagements were made with UK counterparties; perhaps the opening up of admission pathways will see him (and others who attended G’Day UK) consider membership (yes, tongue is firmly in cheek).

Another highlight for me was the CEO/President Webinar, ‘CPA: a global designation’, that Paul Taylor arranged. The webinar seemed to be well received and Geoff and I both remarked that it is an excellent way to use technology to connect with members – and an efficient way for members to obtain CPD hours! I note, incidentally, via CPA Update that another webinar is planned to take place on July 28 with Peter Switzer interviewing David Gonski (this one is not to be missed!).

No ghostwriter for this blog…

A member today asked me whether I really write this blog (and other stuff that goes out in my name). I’ve now been asked about this enough times that I thought to write and confirm that, for better or worse, I do indeed “pen” every word.

A special thanks to the London-based members that I met tonight who actually talked to me about this blog – proving they read it. It’s nice to know. We had a great turnout to a member CPD event near our London office tonight, as well as a good number participating in a “Euro Zone Webinar” that our CEO, Geoff Rankin, and I talked to. It is wonderful to meet so many active and actively engaged members.

Verbal reports from non-CPA Australia parties indicate that our members are prized by UK employers for their professionalism, skills, and outlook on life. This is always great to hear, but comes as no surprise.