Page 2640 - Week 12 - Thursday, 16 November 1989
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MR WHALAN: And indeed Mr Collaery probably supports it as well, so that would be quite consistent with the traditions of this city and past practice.
Secondary Education
MR MOORE: My question is also to Mr Whalan as Minister for Education. I refer to the Minister's address to the ACT secondary principals council workshop on 12 November, in which he had signalled the education system's abandonment of Dr Richard Campbell's visionary and educationally sound plan. I quote from a copy of that speech:
I should point out that you are now having to deal with another legacy of Dr Campbell, who was the instigator of the separation of the senior two years of secondary education into senior colleges. That decision led, as it did elsewhere in Australia, to an impoverished junior secondary system.
Will the Minister give this Assembly an assurance that the integrity of the college system will be maintained and funding will continue at least at current levels, and will the Minister assure us that sufficient funds will be redirected, perhaps from non-service areas, to correct the deficiency he sees in high school education?
MR WHALAN: I have had the opportunity since I have been the Minister responsible for education to spend a lot of time in schools and with various groups of professionals associated with the school system, and indeed during the budget consultative process. Because I wanted to have an idea of the management's assessment of the possible budget outcomes, I had separate meetings with the managers involved in the preschools, primary schools, high schools and secondary colleges. Each of those meetings went for a very considerable period of time and one evening I met for several hours with principals of the high schools. On that occasion I had reinforced very strongly, and quite forcefully, some of the feelings of people in the high schools that the management of the high schools themselves as an integral part of the school system had suffered from a resource point of view as a result of the creation of the secondary colleges.
It is appropriate at this point to say that the Government has not got any proposal before it, nor does it have any proposal in the back of its corporate mind, in any way related to changing the system of secondary colleges that we have here in the ACT. I think that they have been proved to be successful.
There are a number of problems that are created as a result of the division, and among those is professional development of teachers within the system. Quite rightly,
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