Page 427 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 February 1993
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We are also aware, of course, of the cut in education funding of some 1.8 per cent or $3.4m in the 1992-93 ACT budget and the continuing pressure from the Commonwealth Grants Commission to reduce spending upon ACT education even further, by approximately $30m. Given these major financial constraints, the continued existence of small schools which will be dependent upon additional funding must be in doubt. The alternative, of course - that is, no additional funding for small schools - places such small schools equally in doubt because, without additional funding, educational viability is in question; and parents will react accordingly by withdrawing their children.
Imagine, then, the response of people concerned about education when it became public that we were dealing with not only several small schools of just over 100 pupils but a primary school that was positively tiny. I refer to Griffith Primary, which when it closed had 34 students. Griffith Primary, as we are aware, was once a very large school on a very large campus, and even when half of the school became the O'Connell Education Centre - I think that was back in the 1970s - the remaining school buildings could still accommodate 410 pupils. More recently, with population shifts and demographic changes in the older suburbs such as Griffith, the school has suffered a continuous decline in enrolments from 219 in 1991 to 178 in 1992 and, as I mentioned earlier, to a mere 34 this year, as of this week.
The decline was recognised even in 1991 when the Alliance Government, in an attempt to keep the school open, decided to twin it with Narrabundah Primary. This arrangement, which was basically administrative, has not been successful. The reasons for this lack of success in twinning with Narrabundah are unknown to me. I have heard complaints that teachers did not have any guidelines from the Education Department; that the Teachers Union did not support twinning; that the principal was covering both campuses, that is, Narrabundah and Griffith. Frankly, none of these reasons stack up, Madam Speaker, because the same circumstances, if true, could apply equally to the Mount Rogers Community School, which is a successful twinning, as Mr Wood would know, of Melba and Spence primary schools. I cannot, therefore, accept the complaints that the twinning of Griffith and Narrabundah was fundamentally a mistake. However, I do have to accept the argument that Griffith Primary somehow was abandoned, because problems facing the school were known by the Labor Party Government and the department for much of last year.
Despite an undertaking given to me to provide me with a copy of the report of the Griffith-Narrabundah review committee set up in term 2 last year, which report I have not yet seen, the Minister in October announced additional funding of $20,000 per year for a deputy principal on each campus, matching support on a dollar-for-dollar basis of up to $5,000 for library needs and, for items of equipment, up to $500. Despite this additional funding, one of the twins, Griffith, began 1993 with but 57 pupils. By all reasonable judgments, no matter how sad or nostalgic one might be, commonsense should have suggested - indeed, it should have demanded - that the school should be closed and its 57 pupils moved to the surrounding primary schools of Forrest, Red Hill and Narrabundah, all of which have some vacancies. By all reasonable educational judgments, the school should have closed, because unless considerable additional resources were diverted to Griffith Primary its 57 pupils would not receive the educational opportunities enjoyed by their peers elsewhere in the ACT government primary school system.
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