Page 1617 - Week 06 - Thursday, 3 May 1990
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Mr Speaker, we as a community simply must face up to the need to provide quality education for our children at considerably less cost than is currently being incurred. That is a fact. Part of that process of producing quality education at less cost can be by closing those schools experiencing reduction in student numbers because of the changing demography of our student population. There is no merit, in my belief, in having a school in the centre of a number of suburbs where there are insufficient children to fill it. The logical thing is to close that school and put your teaching, resource material and students into some other school where the job can be done better.
That leaves that school open for other purposes. It might be for another community purpose. It might be that we can lease it and get some revenue from it and retain it against some future need; or it might be that the assessment in the final analysis is that the school is really beyond need and we get rid of it.
Mr Speaker, I agree that there are values intrinsic to a school or a system that should be retained. Mr Wood is quite right. We will retain those intrinsic values wherever it is humanly possible to do so. I believe that the climate for change is such that we can take on that need to change. There is an acceptance of it. All interests in the matter are agreed that we must change, that we must save some money. I believe that, with cooperation between all parties, we can achieve a better education system at less cost, which is what we must of necessity do anyway.
MR JENSEN (3.29): Mr Speaker, once again we have heard a reasoned and excellent speech on this issue by Mr Wood, and I do not believe that there is any member in this house who does not acknowledge Mr Wood's interest and experience in this area. It is good, Mr Speaker, to see this sort of debate taking place in this house rather than some of the more invective statements and misleading comments in relation to the Government's position. I can assure Mr Wood that I support the concept that schools are more than just grounds and school buildings. In fact, these only provide the location for the education of our children to take place, as the Chief Minister has already indicated. However, while they do provide the location for our educators to get the message across to their students, it is important not only that they are in the right place but that they provide the right sort of environment for our children to receive their education. I believe that is important, and these are the sorts of issues that should have been examined the last time that we in this town had to make decisions about school closures - decisions taken at the time by a previous Federal Labor administration.
At that time, I was a community representative on the P and C council of a college and attended meetings where the concepts that were being put forward at the time were
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