Page 3553 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 12 October 1994
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attachment to the college, or in some instances on the basis of groups of friends attending particular secondary colleges. These may not be the exact criteria for these enrolments; but they are certainly close to the mark. I have also had personal experience of the appeals process for secondary college placements, having served as a parent representative on the appeals board some years ago.
Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I also wish to say at the outset that I believe that considerable damage was done to any effective examination of this issue to date by the Federal Government in the time before the ACT achieved self-government and by the Alliance Government in raising community expectations about school closures being the answer to the management of school enrolments. There is no doubt that this approach has caused disquiet, resistance and opposition from school communities and has resulted in a general lack of will by the current ACT Government - and, in particular, the Minister for Education and his department - to examine constructively the issue of school enrolments in an existing environment of, at times, intense competition between what are seen as competing schools.
The Minister cannot argue that the issue has not received attention by others over the years. I was a member of the Belconnen Region High Schools Task Force, which, in 1991, in the report entitled Drawing Together, recommended that the issue of the distribution of enrolments in Belconnen high schools warranted active consideration by the department. Indeed, the task force made a number of recommendations which the Government could pursue. I would like to quote some of them. Recommendation 1 stated:
Regional promotion of Belconnen high schools should be encouraged and funded, possibly through the Belconnen Regional Support Centre, with attention to the regional coordination of information and to the promotion of regional meetings of parents and citizens. There is no reason not to extend regional promotion of high schools to the rest of the ACT.
Further recommendations of that task force were:
9. Principals of the eight northside high schools, with Ministry support, should establish an appropriate procedure for monitoring enrolments and distribution of out-of-area applications.
10. Representatives of high school boards in the Belconnen region are encouraged to meet at least annually to review enrolment procedures, to provide mutual assistance and to resolve any matters which may affect enrolments.
11. Written advice on enrolment monitoring and the results of review procedures should be provided to the Belconnen Regional Support Centre.
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