Victoria's previous Liberal government abolished the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) and the state now spends less than the allowance on state schools' relief. There is no comprehensive or timely evidence of the extent to which students miss out, but there ought to be. The 1872 Victorian Education Act committed us to compulsory, free, secular education. This is one of this state's proudest achievements and social innovations of Australia. Richard Teese's history of the public high school (For The Common Weal: The Public High School in Victoria, 1910-2010), and its massive expansion in Victoria amply demonstrates the value of public investment so our state schools were able to break down the barriers to access of knowledge. Our universities and economy in turn benefit from their existence and planned provision for them, and so does the knowledge society that we continue to build and rely upon for prosperity. But as Barry Jones so forcefully put it, we had one problem from the start, "There was a striking omission in the 1872 act – the failure to define education. This deficiency remains in its latest incarnation, the Education and Training [Reform] Act (2006)." We still have no community standard of education – provision or content – nor a public office to monitor access, quality and equity. We had a painful reminder from the Mitchell Institute recently that a quarter of our high school students are dropping out. No wonder our confidence is decreasing on both fronts: the quality of the educational experience for all, and state governments losing sight of their commitment to genuinely public and free education. Parents know Victorian state schools get $2000 less per student than the national average. Parents have also been told in a 2015 Victorian Auditor General's Office report on additional school costs for families that the Education Department did not know the actual cost of educating a child. So how can the Student Resource Package, the funding formula of state schools, be redesigned without such knowledge? Parents are looking forward to hearing what the Andrews government's government school vision is.

Without stated and hopefully eventually bipartisan aims, how can we measure success? How does the public know what value for money is and which non-monetary reforms accompany monetary reforms? What parents want for their children are good local schools in their own communities. Parents want these schools to be well-funded and resourced according to the needs of the students, and they want these schools to employ high-quality teachers and outstanding principals who commit to authentic family-school partnerships. So why are parents not getting what they are after? It is clear that parliamentary oversight needs to be strengthened. The Auditor General needs follow the dollar powers to scrutinise education, given its centrality to our future and the amount of spending involved. The obvious omission, however, is the absence of an education ombudsman. All parents and students would have one place to go to with concerns about how they are treated by educational institutions. There are many other matters an ombudsman would look into, such as the 2015 CEDA call for better data to develop evidence-based policies to tackle educational disadvantage. Any bills – for example the Andrews government's bill giving 25 per cent of government school funding to the non-government school sector – would be assessed with an impact statement and, if necessary, re-evaluated or challenged in court. An ombudsman would provide action, establish publicly accessible data, report regularly to the public on achievements, and equally distribute good governance and accountability. It could be funded by a levy, as is common practice in other industries, and tell if we're spotting the students who have additional learning needs, how many students are engaged or dropping out and if we're meeting the needs of disadvantaged students.

An ombudsman would monitor the impact of the parent payment policy, public-private partnerships, TAFE changes, private providers or higher education fees. It would even measure how much time government schools are distracted from their teaching and learning because of a lack of resources and a need to raise money for critical items themselves. We need a dedicated education ombudsman to be involved with the entire range of schooling options. It would provide a review mechanism that protects the quality of provision, access, fairness and equity. The education industry is one of our biggest and most important exports and is not protected by solid governance, auditing, reporting and feedback. An ombudsman would treat Victorians as education consumers, with rights and protection, in the public interest. Lea Campbell is co-author of I just want to go to school, and a founding member of Our Children, Our Schools.