Page 1616 - Week 06 - Thursday, 3 May 1990
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I agree with Mr Wood that our education system is about people. It is not about buildings; it is not about facilities; it is about people. It is about preparing our children to enter the work force so they can earn themselves a living and to become good citizens. But excellence in education and conservation of community resources are not incompatible. Consolidation of resources into a lesser number of buildings does not need to be detrimental to the standard of education. Mr Wood is quite right: the buildings themselves are not intrinsic to educational standards. It is the people who are in those buildings that count, whether they be students or whether they be teachers or whether they be support staff. I believe that this Government is quite sensitive to that and recognises it fully.
There was some discussion about the 13,000 vacant places. It is not a nonsense figure; it is an actual figure. I have some sympathy with Mr Wood, who said that it might be better if it were converted into terms of classrooms. That is a fair proposition, but I do not think that is very difficult to do. My understanding is that the average classroom size in the ACT schools runs at around 26 people. Divide 26 into 13,000 and you come up with the number of classrooms that we have over and above the need and over and above the requirement.
I accept Dr Kinloch's proposition that the figures might be a bit rubbery, but they are rubbery around a figure of 13,500 places, not rubbery around a figure of 9,000 or 8,000 or 10,000. The 13,500 has been developed by the Education Department as a fairly accurate statement of its perceptions along the lines that Dr Kinloch described of how much surplus accommodation there is in our school system today.
I am not going to go out there and count them. I am not going to argue with the officers. I have already said that our officers are sensitive to the needs of education; they are well aware of the problem; they are on top of it. I do not believe that they see it in their interests to make up a figure. I do not have to go and count every vacant place in our schools. If they tell me that for planning purposes there are something like 13,500 vacant seats in our schools, I accept that. I think that the members opposite should do them the credit of accepting that they have integrity, too.
So we are talking about 13,500 places, give or take a few; or 13,500 divided by 26, giving the number of classrooms. I have not got my pocket calculator so I cannot work out on the spur of the moment just how many classrooms that is. I have no objection to pursuing the debate, as Mr Wood has done, on the question of how many classrooms we are talking about, but it does not matter. The bottom line is that there is a very large surplus of accommodation in our school systems that we do not need and that we cannot afford, and so we have to do something to rationalise that.
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