Page 1594 - Week 06 - Thursday, 3 May 1990
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Let me pick a non-existent mock school - let us call it Gungahlin College - built in 1993, with a capacity of 1,200 students. Taking every classroom, every space, that 1,200 would represent the maximum possible number of students in the school. However, between 1993 and 2003 that school could have an enlarged laser computer facility where you could only have 10 students in a classroom which had previously accommodated 26, or perhaps the school could produce a hospitality course with a large kitchen area and hospitality centre - one of the E courses - where again you could have only 10 or 15 in a classroom.
By 2003 the number of students might be down from 1,200 to 800 and the board of that school might say that part of the reason for that was that the school was being used differently. We would then compute that, not at whatever the previous capacity might be but at the lower figure. That has been happening throughout the system. The Department of Education recognises that, but for planning purposes it has been a useful exercise to begin with the largest possible capacity surplus - 13,533. What is it actually - 9,000, 10,000, 11,000? It is very hard to give a realistic figure until there has been consultation.
I come to the total recurrent savings. Mr Wood quite properly requested some of these figures directly from the Department of Education. I would stress that the figures totalling $1.17m represent total annual recurrent savings. Please do not mistake this for the value of the buildings or the value of the property. That $1.1m for five schools - Woden Valley, Downer, Fisher, Page and Pearce primaries - is total annual recurrent savings, which is quite a different matter. I do not doubt that there will be very considerable savings in restructuring in the two years ahead.
I liked very much Mr Wood's criteria. A whole range of criteria for public consultation is now being issued by the Department of Education to all 168 schools and to all people concerned. Included in the criteria are some of the factors that Mr Wood has already mentioned - school and community spirit, access and so forth. The criterion is not simply whether a building is underused. Where it is, its possible value in that total community and related matters are now being looked at.
I want to beware of quoting any names. I have been to many, many schools over the last four months. Let me quote school X and school Y, both primary schools, both within a kilometre of each other and both operating at half capacity. Those schools are nearby, so there is not a problem with parents getting their children to one school or the other, depending on which one is technically closed.
What you can have here is an amalgamation of those two schools. If you fill up the larger and better of the schools, you do not in any way harm the educational process
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