Page 512 - Week 02 - Thursday, 25 February 1993
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The discussion of technological change appears to anticipate an increase in capital budgets or parental contributions if the stated change, trend or challenge of technological advances possibly reducing the need for structured learning within classrooms is to become a reality. Again, it does not address the spirit of the study, which is to look at 2020 and determine what our vision is for the future. I think a more constructive approach would be to put forward the proposal that technology could lead to such changes, and then lead debate on the possibilities arising from these changes. Reduction in classroom teaching is only one of a number of possibilities that can arise from technological change. Another, I suggest, is the separation of disciplines into their factual and intellectual components and redirecting more teaching resources into developing intellectual study and research of subjects, making the connection to the need for access to factual material.
The statement that urban renewal will assist in keeping schools viable over the longer period and will reduce the need for schools in new areas also clearly indicates that a policy line has been adopted without reference to the strategic planning process. What this process should eventually arrive at is ideas on how and when new schools will be built, what level of school provision the community is prepared to support financially through taxation and other measures, and what part older education assets should play in the future of the education system and broader community life in Canberra. The presumption that urban renewal will provide sufficient school age children to keep older schools viable is currently not supported by available evidence. Let me quote an authority that illustrates my point. In 1986, Lyndsay Neilson and Associates provided a report to the NCDC on the principle of urban consolidation. Page 5-5 of that report, speaking on the decline in enrolments in older government primary schools, states:
In theory, programs to achieve increases in the housing stock should help alleviate this problem. However, if such programs result only in an increase in the stock of medium density units, particularly private enterprise developments, their impact may be slight, as experience shows that such developments have not, generally, proved attractive to families with young children. The redevelopment that has taken place in Kingston has resulted in a net increase of over three hundred dwellings, but the impact to date on enrolments at Griffith Primary School has not been sufficient to reverse the downward trend.
Of course, we know that that downward trend continued and that further attempts to reverse the problems of a small school by twinning Griffith with Narrabundah have also apparently failed. There has been no lessening of the need for new schools in other areas. Other more recent studies also suggest that an increase in housing density does not lead to an increase in the school age population.
Similarly, the discussion of housing in the future follows the policy that is promoted for urban renewal. However, this section limits itself to discussing the need to provide housing for smaller family units, without addressing the social needs of those units. Expectations of space provided by housing have changed significantly since our parents' early years, when several children often shared a bedroom and possibly even the same bed. Children in 1993 expect and
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