Page 1805 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 May 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
that are quite capable of taking in the surrounding community, slightly larger defined, and serving the needs of that community. There is no reason for people to lose the ability to use school halls or other community facilities merely because they are no longer served by a particular school.
Those things are all going to be within easy reach of the local community - considerably easier reach than they would be anywhere else in Australia. We will still have smaller average school sizes by urban comparisons than any other city in Australia and we will still have access to very near regional facilities of that kind.
Mr Wood made one final reference to something which he might argue was contributing to the destruction of education in the ACT. He said that the massive disruption of this change would somehow destroy educational quality. I acknowledge that the change is disrupting. I acknowledge that it is not convenient or acceptable to some people for those changes to occur. To them I apologise for that inconvenience, but I regret that a system which needs to adapt to changing circumstances cannot be free of change. In some cases that means having to inconvenience some people.
From the time that I have spent talking to teachers, parents and pupils at the schools that were amalgamated at the end of 1988, I am not convinced that the changes that occurred then were entirely negative or entirely without a positive feature.
Mr Berry: What percentage were negative and what percentage were positive?
MR HUMPHRIES: It was about fifty-fifty, Mr Berry. I think about 50 per cent of the comments were positive and about 50 per cent were negative.
Mr Berry: Anecdotal efforts.
MR HUMPHRIES: Well, they are anecdotal. I suggest that you go out and talk to members of the same sort of community and find out what they are thinking. The comments that I received were, in many cases, positive about the new arrangements and they were enthusiastic about the additional choices that were possible within schools with more resources. That is what we are talking about - giving schools more resources. Those resources flow from the fact the schools have larger pupil numbers and therefore greater resources at their disposal. (Extension of time granted)
There has been reference to the work done by Dr Perkins. I do not want to go into any detail about Dr Perkins' work at this stage because work is being done on that by both the ACT Education Department and the ACT Treasury. I am very happy to bring forward the findings of that work. I am not
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .