Page 1691 - Week 08 - Thursday, 28 September 1989
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You cannot reduce class sizes and cut 65 teachers. You have not followed your policies. You are turning them into a sham. That is what this budget does; it turns them into a sham. And further:
These pressures are most evident in high schools -
Look what you get: nine teachers cut from high schools. Which nine teachers? What about morale? I quote again:
We will ensure that quality support services in areas such as counselling, professional development, research and the provision of specialist teachers are maintained in all schools.
What we have, of course, is a failure to maintain the reading recovery program, one of the most important programs in terms of the disadvantaged.
I quote further:
Labor will maintain the excellent record in the ACT of having the highest year 11-12 retention rate in Australia and will broaden curriculum options for all students, but particularly students who do not wish to proceed to tertiary studies.
I suggest, Mr Speaker, that this budget does exactly the opposite to that. What happens with the introduction of the system of counting students in July is that we get a real cut in colleges, and the effect of that will be to turn those colleges into matriculation colleges; in other words, colleges that are academically orientated. That is not what our colleges have been. In fact, in the past, they have gone further and further to catering for students across the whole range of curriculum areas. It says "particularly students who do not wish to proceed to tertiary studies". It is those students who are going to be most disadvantaged by this budget - the ordinary people.
It says:
- encourage wider access to college for mature age students; and
- encourage individual colleges to develop areas of particular excellence in areas such as language, music, drama, agriculture, technology and other curriculum areas where concentration of resources would provide better student services.
These are great aims, they are great goals, and I congratulate the Labor Party for this very, very thorough education policy. I would be delighted to have the opportunity to also congratulate them on a budget that
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