How long does it take to make a revolution? In 1776 the Intercontinental Congress in Philadelphia took June and the first week of July to draft and subscribe to the Declaration of Independence. It took a few wars for Britain to accept it. But the American Revolution was declared and explained with remarkable brevity.

The French were a little more chaotic. In 1792 the monarchy was abolished, but the revolution is usually dated to the storming of the Bastille three years earlier. The Russian Bolsheviks were methodical and ruthless in their October Revolution of 1917.

So how goes Australia's revolution? You didn't know we had one? Kevin Rudd and the Labor Party declared the "Education Revolution" at the beginning of 2007. They said it would go through various phases, and spent a lot of treasure on it. By now we should be showing results.

The first part of the revolution was equipment. The government promised a computer on the desk of every student in years 9 to 12. But there isn't. Not even one for every two desks. You couldn't share one between three. The government got its sums wrong and didn't allocate enough money for the back-up and the installation. It illustrates why we need to improve education - ministers need better numeracy standards - and showed this would be a revolution bigger on promise than delivery.

The next phase was to roll the revolution over to buildings. The government announced it was "Building the Education Revolution" with new halls and canteens in every school whether they were wanted or not. This would be revolutionary and "save" the economy by spending about $15 billion.