Page 1995 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 5 June 1990
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reasonable number. I am not in the education business so I do not know what a reasonable number is. Presumably, the school population in any suburb as it ages will fall off to the point where there is not the number of students presenting at that school to allow it to continue to run as a viable school.
Decisions then have to be made about what you do first of all with the students. I think this is one of the problems that the Minister for Education is currently facing. I do not know whether Downer is one of the schools or not, but you have to make up your mind what to do about the students. You have to take their interests and their concerns into account when you decide to dispose of them to other schools. You have to see how they are going to get there and what effect this will have on their socialisation as children and growing adults. I believe that that is something that this Government is conscious of and is taking care of.
The second aspect of the question is: what do you do with the physical facilities after you have relocated the children somewhere else? That is very much a function of how that suburb is situated for other kinds of community resources. If it is poor in community facilities for meetings of groups of ageing people and special interest groups who live in that suburb, it might be that the school facility should be retained as a community facility and turned to those other community uses. That would be a matter of gauging the demand and the need, and they are not necessarily the same thing.
Downer, of course, has been served recently by the establishment of a new community centre. It had, in my view, been deprived of that kind of facility for many years when other newer suburbs were being provided with them. There has been a new community centre built on the outskirts of Downer - between Downer and Dickson - in the last year or so. In fact, it was opened only a matter of months ago. So there would not be a very strong argument, probably, for saying that Downer, as a suburb, ought necessarily to retain that school for community purposes. Private enterprise might decide to continue to use it for educational purposes. A group might be looking for educational facilities and perhaps that school could be made available to them on suitable arrangements so that it could continue to be used for educational purposes. It may help to revitalise the suburb in the future. There are many uses to which you could put such a facility.
If the thrust of the question is to determine whether the Government is really thinking about the consequences of decisions that might result in the closure of schools, the question has failed because the Government is aware of all of the ramifications of it. The Government is considering all of those ramifications and, if it is ultimately determined that the Downer school is one that should close, then these alternative uses will be considered before the final disposition of the school.
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