Page 1675 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 18 May 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
In its youth policy Labor also committed the Labor Government to:
Provide extra resources to government high schools to tackle the increasing need for improved pastoral care, counselling and careers advisory services to the young.
These are indeed laudable aims, Madam Speaker. In what may well have been a prophetic statement, the Council of P and C Associations said in "The Schools Budget 1992-93", its June 1992 submission to the ACT Government:
P and C Council welcomes the commitment to the government school system made by the ALP as part of its school policy. Yet a commitment to the goals of government schooling must be supported by commitments to adequate funding.
The P and C Council's submission went on to say:
Parents of students in government schools welcomed the declarations earlier this year to give highest priority to the funding of public education, to provide increased resources for the development of high schools as part of a long-term plan for the development of this sector, and to ensure that any savings to be made in the education budget will not come from schools or teaching resources. The task remains to turn those declarations, among others, into reality.
It is the view of the Council that some practical steps towards implementation of these commitments could have been taken at the earliest opportunity. Some involved relatively small commitments of funds, yet would have provided a strong signal of the desire of the government to proceed on matters of real significance to the school community.
It is worth considering what the Government has achieved so far. In the 1992-93 budget the Government introduced two education policy initiatives, these being the provision of additional resources for improved pastoral care and career advisory programs in high schools, with an estimated cost of $300,000, and the integration of primary students with special needs into mainstream classes, again with an estimated cost of $300,000.
The 1993-94 budget provided a further real opportunity for the Government to meet its election commitments on education. The education policy initiatives in the 1993-94 budget were as follows: The development of a long-term education budgetary strategy supported by the formation of the Ministerial Advisory Council on Public Education - it is timely that we have a report from that council tabled in this Assembly this afternoon; breaking the nexus that set ACT funding of non-government schools at 50 per cent of the Commonwealth's level; and savings of $3.48m, in part by the reduction of about 80 school based positions, a proposal which was later rejected by the Assembly. In addition, a number of enhancements were proposed in this budget. These included staffing and curriculum development to assist with teaching community languages in ethnic schools and extension of the special needs integration program.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .