Page 3940 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 23 November 1993
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eventually see, is necessarily the way that it should be pursued. I have not gone into it in any sort of detail, but I am just a little sceptical about some of the measures that have been proposed. We will have, in due course, a very clear picture - in fact it is pretty substantially together now - of just what schools will do in each event.
The point that I have been making and the department has been making, persistently, is that we can accommodate. The reductions in the budget were quite manageable. If it encourages us to move into new and more intelligent ways of doing things, to continue the innovative leadership in education in Australia, that is a good thing. Let me give some examples. I would wish that schools would reassess the way they allocate their points. They have that facility. There is no inhibition on their looking entirely at the points allocations. For the lay people here, schools get staffed on points. The worth of each level in the school is allocated on points. It is totalled, but the school can allocate it as they wish. They can employ different sorts of teachers and I think that gives them enormous flexibility.
Let me tell you the common one that we expect to happen. Something like 300 classes have fewer than six students. We think there should be some combination or some further action on those. The 500 to 600 classes with fewer than 12 students could also be attended to in some measure. I acknowledge that in particular areas there are priorities, to which I have no objection. It is obvious that schools, particularly the colleges, will need to look at their registered units. Mr Moore and I had a conversation - I think it is the only conversation we ever had about education - after the budget. He conceded the point that I made when he said, yes, he used to take driver education classes at his college. How many students? I think it was two or three students that he was involved with over a period. That sort of arrangement is simply untenable.
A whole range of points have been made to our schools and colleges by which they can proceed. For example, we could make greater use of permanent part-time staff. That facility exists. It is one I am encouraging. It is one that, if any school comes to me, I will talk to them about. Or they can go to the department; they do not need to come to me. We will encourage what they wish. Maybe some schools have to look at what they provide in their elective courses. This applies more to the high schools. We have had great facility there. With the very few teachers or positions in schools that are being taken away, I do not think that there needs to be too much movement within the schools in respect of those classes.
Maybe we could increase the class size in some groups for pastoral care matters. That is an important arrangement, I acknowledge, but maybe we should look at that. Maybe we should delegate tasks differently around the staff. Maybe we could look at the relationship between APS staff and teaching staff. Maybe we could be a little bit more imaginative there. Maybe we could look - I think this is an important point - at rationalisation of the number of times the same unit of study is offered through the timetable. I think we are fairly generous in some of our schools in what we do there. We could look at combinations of units where classes are small, and I am not talking about just those classes under 12 but small classes. I would encourage all schools to look at the way they
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