Page 1682 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 18 May 1994
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screaming problems of this age group and then wonder why we have problems in our community later on. How many studies do we have to see that indicate massive savings to the community if effective education, guidance and support are given in the early years?
It is interesting to note that the first five recommendations deal with student management and welfare. Although we all recognise the need for positive academic outcomes, this age group also has a very special and demanding need for social education and guidance. As adolescents have done all through history, they will be experimenting with alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. They will be exploring their sexuality and their sexual relationships. They will be forming their own identities and images of themselves as either males or females in our society; dealing with massive biological changes and puberty; questioning their status quo and authority; asserting themselves as separate from their parents; and they will be very influenced by their peer groups. This is a most volatile time for our young. Recent statistics show that one in five people in this age group will encounter some behavioural disturbance or mental illness. I refer for that comment to the Early Psychosis Intervention Centre and Dr Kristine Mercuri in Melbourne.
How shameful it is that today we are still asking that these very worthwhile recommendations be put into action, particularly in the light of the speech we just heard from this Minister. How shameful it is that budget papers reflect high school sizes in the order of 1,000 pupils when the recommendations clearly state that high schools should have between 500 and 800 students and that enrolments be monitored to ensure that the size of high schools is within this range. Does the Government understand the importance of keeping to these recommended levels? I realise that these decisions have been economic, but I also believe that they are false economies. What we save on education, we lose on community welfare, legal costs and lost production. What price education? The far better question would be: What price ignorance?
Even though the recommendations included the equivalent of one additional teacher being allocated to each high school to assist in student management, and that class sizes be kept to a maximum of 25 students per class, the Minister for Education attempted to cut 80 positions from the department. Not only were the recommendations to be ignored, but an attempt was made to exacerbate the already critical situation. Fortunately, the Assembly prevented him from going through with that. I cannot stress strongly enough how vitally important it is for us to get our high school education right. There is too much at stake to be gambling with the futures of our youth because the Government refuses to make education of our youth a priority. Instead, it makes its priority Labor.
There has been no shortage of reviews of high schools in the ACT, just a remarkable lack of adequate response from the system to those reviews. The findings of the school council in its report "In the Middle: Schooling for Young Adolescents" reiterate all the findings of ACT reviews over the past 10 years. It concludes:
... the need for curriculum, organisational and professional renewal in relation to the middle years of schooling is long overdue.
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