Page 1813 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 May 1990
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never been questioned. In fact, it was at a time when those schools had much higher numbers of students that Canberra earned its reputation of having the best public school system in Australia. It is interesting to look at how the numbers of school students dropped quickly in Canberra suburbs about 10 to 15 years after the areas were first settled.
At Downer, for example, the school had 884 students in 1969. This number had dropped to 155 before the school was closed during the 1988 amalgamations. In Woden Valley, about 5,200 students were attending the primary schools in 1984. Today, only 2,000 local children attend those schools, with another 500 coming from out of the area. Even in newer areas, such as Weston Creek, school populations have dropped by half or more since the late 1970s. I do not want to mention any school by name because it would be unfair in the present circumstances, but overall the primary school population has fallen from a peak of more than 3,900 in 1978 to less than 1,700 in the census in February this year. It is the same story in Belconnen and is starting to be repeated in older parts of Tuggeranong.
It is easy to criticise the planners who built large schools to cater for large numbers of children in new suburbs where young families can afford to live, only to see those schools become costly to run as populations become older. As we spend millions of dollars building new school facilities to cater for the residents in Canberra's developing areas, we have to question whether we can afford to maintain more than 13,000 spare places. We need to be realistic and responsive.
Some people have voiced their concern that schools may have to be reopened when the number of children rises again in those suburbs. Experience shows that this is unlikely but, just in case, the current review allows for a 10 per cent buffer of surplus capacity in all regions. The reason why school populations are unlikely ever to reach their previous levels is interesting demographically and has to do with simple family economics. As Canberra suburbs become older and more developed, they become more expensive to buy into. Young couples beginning their families cannot afford to buy houses in older areas and instead go to newer, cheaper suburbs. When they get older, perhaps when some or all of their children are off their hands, they may then buy houses in older areas which are more expensive.
It is true that some young couples may buy houses in older areas, but the figures show that couples who make the decision to buy these relatively more expensive properties tend to have fewer children than the couples who settle in newer suburbs. Demographic figures produced by the ACT Administration over many years bear out the fact that the fertility rate of women of child-bearing age living in older suburbs is well below that of women of a similar age group living in outer, newer suburbs. It should also be
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