Page 1110 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 March 1990
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still remains and it has now reached a level of 13,000 vacant places in existing schools or 20 per cent more places than the number of students. At the same time, the Government has been bound by new suburban development to build new schools in Tuggeranong. This overall burden of rising costs has been felt by schools, parents and teachers and has been recognised by the Grants Commission as contributing to over standard expenditure in education. It is clear that a major restructuring of the delivery of schooling and preschooling services is necessary if education quality is to be maintained, just as a major restructuring is necessary in health delivery.
Options such as the previous Government's attempts to trim at the edges have achieved some savings. However, such an approach, if pursued too far, must damage the quality of service. This Government will not raise maximum class sizes, as this is likely to damage the quality of the education service. Accordingly, we must consider school consolidations as part of the Government's restructuring process. This will not be done in a haphazard way. It will be done on a planned basis, it will involve every part of the system, and it will be done with full community consultation.
I should add that, just as with the expansion of services at Calvary Hospital, success in using existing education infrastructure more intensively can have a direct impact on the necessity to achieve consolidations. If the demographic situation can be changed within a school's catchment area, we can keep that school viable and avoid the need to build a new one somewhere else. For example, the development at Bruce has ensured that the Aranda Primary School has been able to keep up its enrolments.
We are committed to the provision of a genuine choice in education by making sure that non-government schools are able to offer a high standard of service. The provision of funding to this sector will be reviewed and one area which will receive particular scrutiny is the cost of providing bus services to these schools.
The Government believes that the ACT has the best education system in the country and we are committed to maintaining the high level of service currently offering, but we must reduce its cost.
The recently released National Capital Plan provides scope for ACT Government action to make better use of the existing infrastructure. A significant area of land in West Belconnen has been earmarked for urban development. My Government will be acting quickly to address planning and other issues involved so that we can have access to this land, which is close to existing schools, roads and other infrastructure. This will lessen the pace of investment in Gungahlin, where infrastructure will have to be fully developed from raw earth.
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