Page 2509 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 7 August 1991
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time I was counting that not all the people were voting, because many recognised that they were not part of that community. Mrs Nolan sits there with an incredulous look - - -
Mrs Nolan: It is true that some people did not vote, but a lot voted that were from out of the area.
MR MOORE: Thank you for your interjection. "It is true", was the interjection, "that some people did not vote". She will remember that the hall was absolutely full. There were people standing all around the back. It was obviously holding far more than 200 people.
This debate is about ensuring the best possible education for the people of Weston Creek. In that sense, Mrs Nolan and the Liberal members and I and Mr Wood are at one. That is what we are on about. Unfortunately, some members seem to have been swayed to the view that the best possible education can be gained by the biggest possible school because that gives curriculum options. Think back to your own days in school or, for those who were teachers, to your own teaching. Who were the best teachers? The best teachers were those whose priority was to teach the students rather than to teach the subject.
Yet what we have in this sort of argument time and again is the notion that the wider choice of curriculum options is what is going to make a better school. I have been fortunate enough to experience teaching in schools of 3,000, 1,500, down to 450. And the nicest schools to teach in, without a doubt, the ones with the best atmosphere, the ones where the students felt at home, were the smaller schools.
Mr Humphries: Not all teachers agree with that view.
MR MOORE: Not all teachers agree with me - I accept the point made by Mr Humphries - and not all teachers put as their priority teaching the students. Those who have experienced schools and have walked around them know that there are always teachers whose priority is teaching the subject. Let me say that one of the great joys of teaching in the Canberra system is that that is rarely the case here. But the bigger the school, the more the push is towards doing that and the more impersonal the nature of the school. In this whole debate we have rarely heard from the Education Department or from the ministry about the benefits of small schools. Often we hear about the benefits of large schools, but very rarely about the benefits of small schools. They do exist.
I would like to move now to the way we determine how the community is involved. Having the community involved at that public meeting was a very interesting exercise. Suddenly there was a possibility, suddenly there was hope, that the Alliance Government decision, made without consultation, to close Holder High School, which the ex-
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