Page 2181 - Week 07 - Thursday, 6 June 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
They were quite sound, as I remember them. But they were not taken up on this occasion. It is just plain bad management that has caused a most destructive year for education during 1990 and into 1991. How can anyone have confidence in a government of that low calibre?
We have had a high quality system and that quality is now diminished. I will now be careful - in this debate and in the coming months - about describing our system as one of high quality, because significant problems have developed and they have not been attended to. All the concentration of effort, energy, thought and time has been directed towards the negative aspect of school closures. And this has meant that we have not been able to concentrate on the problems that are developing.
There is nothing static in any system, and most especially a school system. And if you neglect it, as you have, it does not get better. I have no doubt that the Labor Government that I expect to be operating very soon will attend, with urgency, to these problems that are emerging. I have mentioned them before. Let me run over just a few of them now. We have very real problems in our high schools, not the least of which concerns the behaviour of so many of our students - while always acknowledging, of course, the calibre of most of those students. We have lost a sense of direction in our high school sector in particular. Urgent work is needed on curriculum, across all sectors of the schools. We have come so far, and we need a redefinition for our schools for them to be more confident of the paths they need to follow.
We need to do a great deal in respect of teacher stress. Teaching is, in my belief, the most difficult of all occupations, and we are not directing enough attention to the stresses experienced by teachers. For me, that is an urgent problem. Along with that is the problem of student alienation; it is a growing one. As the committee on which I serve has heard many times recently, the problem is growing and it is becoming more and more serious. These are just some of the matters that a Labor government will attend to with great urgency in the very near future.
But this Government is not just disrupting the system, as it has in the last year; it is not even able to maintain a routine administration. It cannot get anything up and running. I will mention just a few things as I reflect on the remarks that were made in the Chief Minister's speech when he took over some 18 months ago. There were some priorities for education, such as a schools council. We still have no progress on that. I believe that there is a paper written somewhere, but it has never been released 18 months on. No wonder I can say that there is a lack of direction.
Mr Humphries: It was delayed at the request of the school groups; that is all.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .