Page 949 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 March 1990
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I want to refer briefly to the comments made by Mrs Nolan with reference to the teaching of languages, in particular Asian languages. The Alliance policy on education emphasises the need for stronger teaching of languages in our schools and although, as the report indicates, much valuable work has been done in that regard I think that more can and should be done. I went to school in a system in Britain where the teaching of French was compulsory until the end of year 10 and I thought that was extremely appropriate. If I had my way, without any reference to anybody else, I would make the teaching of at least one language compulsory to year 10 as well. However, that is not the case in ACT schools. Perhaps it should be a target to which we work over a number of years and I hope that we go forward in that respect every year, rather than backwards.
I want finally to refer to the new environment that is typified by the situation following the issuing of that report. I want particularly to refer to the new environment under which education operates. We have a very different scene in education today from the one which was reflected in the report that we have been debating tonight. The ACT now has self-government and the implications of that are that there is a new responsiveness which every part of our society and every part of our policy needs to understand.
Our education system particularly needs to understand and respond to this because the kinds of participation that have been the hallmark of our education system for quite a long time are now, more than ever, an important feature of our system. I am referring particularly to curriculum development and the enhanced role of parents, students and teachers on school boards. This means that today we have responsibilities as general citizens which have to be discharged within the framework of an education system and I think that we have to build that structure very quickly. We cannot wait for the participants in the system to build their own structures. We must provide avenues and forums for those levels of participation to occur.
I have mentioned already that the Alliance Government is exploring the creation of a schools council, which will repatriate education decision-making back into the hands of people whom it affects - parents, teachers and students - and that is very important. It follows, in my view, ineluctably from the advent of self-government.
It is a process which will evolve over many years, but I, for one, support it and I hope that as it evolves it will be supported by other members of this Assembly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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