Page 3400 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 13 October 1993
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senior school education in Australia. It also does not seem congruous that the Government, after early in its term talking of the advantages of having a school system which was easily marketable overseas, would now move to reduce the quality of that college system. In high schools the loss of 30 teachers will be an impossible burden.
As I have said, the Government has promised much. In December last year the Minister stated that the high school development program was largely written and would be tabled early in the new year. Earlier this year yet more forums and discussions were held to determine what we could do to improve our high schools. This was despite the fact that at least two other detailed studies had been carried out, and the education community has been waiting for some time to see the recommendations of these reports adopted and funded.
In primary schools we stand a very high chance of not identifying students with learning difficulties if we do not maintain teacher numbers. Fifteen teachers may not seem very many out of a total of 95 schools; yet we have, by the Government's own figures, 11.5 per cent of junior primary school classes with over 30 students in the class, compared to a national average of 9 per cent. Thirty-seven per cent of senior primary classes have over 30 students, which is far in excess of the national average of 11 per cent. Primary schools are already showing signs of stress, and I believe that they cannot tolerate further cuts. I am convinced that if the Government had the will it could harness the enthusiasm of school communities and find other areas for budget reductions which could meet any real fiscal imperatives forced on the ACT by cuts in Federal Government grants. I have suggested - and Mr Moore has also - that the Government look at increasing cost recovery from school bussing services and allow parents who wish to send their children to out-of-area government schools and non-government schools to bear at least a more realistic cost of that decision.
Madam Speaker, the Government will argue that cuts to the education budget have been forced upon it by the Grants Commission process. I do not accept that the Grants Commission process has a direct bearing on this decision. The ACT Council of Parents and Citizens Associations recently published a paper on the subject entitled "The Commonwealth Grants Commission: Fiscal Policeman or Political Scapegoat". It points out that the Grants Commission has become a scapegoat for politicians who wish to remove themselves from the responsibility of making unpopular decisions. There is no compulsion for any government to follow the dictates of the Grants Commission. As does the P and C Council in its paper, I quote from the Grants Commission itself:
It is important to emphasise that equalisation applies to capacity, not performance. It is not for the Commission to tell the states what to do. We are dealing with untied general revenue grants. So, in principle, the policies followed by a state government do not make any difference to the grant it receives. Each state is free to determine its own priorities.
What actually happens is that the Grants Commission looks at expenditure by the States and applies its own criteria, calling spending over the weighted averages "inefficiencies". The Grants Commission arrives at a standard figure for expenditure on a budget item, and then, taking into account relativities between the systems, which are the things that are unique to that system which - - -
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