Page 2025 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 5 June 1990
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important for you in coming to recognise how the community feels about education. In the mid-1960s there arose a strong element of discontent in the community about the existing education facilities. It was believed that the quality of the system was simply not good enough. A 10-year campaign commenced before a high-quality system was achieved.
That required, to a very large degree, a separation of our education system from New South Wales. It resulted from the dissatisfaction that was evident in Canberra about the shortage of resources, large class sizes with inadequate staffing, and some perception of lack of teacher quality that accompanied administration from New South Wales. There was also a great deal of concern about the curriculum, which in those days in New South Wales was severely restrictive, traditional and not appropriate to that era.
The people who were agitating - and the Canberra Times played a very large part in that debate - saw the opportunity for the ACT to provide a national leadership in education. They saw that the ACT could be a model for the rest of Australia in teacher training, exams, assessment and curriculum, and they set out on that path. It took 10 years and the advent of the Whitlam Government to achieve that end. Indeed, there was established a very high quality education system. It was independent from New South Wales and indeed, in large measure, from the Government. It had generous resources and it was of high quality. The community had fought for it. It was what the community required. They would take nothing less. That remains the case today. The Government is now discovering that fact. I think it was unaware of that priority before it embarked on its course to close up to 25 schools.
In the 10 minutes at my disposal I will not go into all the arguments aimed at pointing out how essential it is, on the one hand, to give our children a high-quality education system and, on the other hand, to provide the ACT with a high level of human resource. I want to mention briefly some evidence of that high-quality system which came to my notice the other day - as I am sure it came to Mr Humphries' notice - from a Dr Price, who looked at certain of our statistics and pointed to what a high-quality system it is. We have a much higher productivity - and that is surely a term the Government can understand - from our education system, even allowing for its higher than average cost. That can be demonstrated in his terms in high levels of students securing jobs and of going into higher education. It can also be demonstrated, as it frequently is, by looking at the high retention rates in our secondary colleges.
In answering a question today, Mr Humphries made some comment about the high levels of youth unemployment. That says more about the lack of opportunities for our school leavers in this fairly largely government town than it does about the quality of our education system.
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