Page 3561 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 12 October 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
The Minister did raise a number of points. I will deal with a couple of those and also with the criticism of Mrs Carnell's article in the Canberra Times today. I was quite amazed by the incredible interpretation placed on Mrs Carnell's article by certain members of the Government. It was very far-fetched. One must question their literary standards. This article has some excellent ideas and suggestions for our education system into the next century. They are very worthy of debate and consideration. But Government members have come up with some incredible interpretations of the article which I have great difficulty in understanding.
Mrs Carnell seems to me to be proposing that we have in our community a number of small schools, which, we accept, will probably need to attract students. Mr Wood himself talked about students moving from one area to another to go to a school of their choice. We live in a free society, and there is choice. Whilst, I suppose, it would be hoped that most students who lived in an area would go to the local school, there are going to be some parents who do not want their children to go there. Accordingly, at present, some schools have more students than others because they have a better reputation, for whatever reason.
What Mrs Carnell is saying in her first point seems to be that schools that happen to be small might need to develop a certain niche to attract students. I think that would be commonsense even with our current system. We have seen some very successful schools which have developed a certain niche in the market in terms of students. Even parents from out of the area tend to send their kids to those schools. The Mawson Primary School is an Australian-Chinese primary school. When I was in practice, I had several Chinese clients, one of whom was a teacher there. It does not have just children of Chinese extraction; it has many children of other extractions as well. Certainly there is a niche there. The Red Hill school provides a French language course. Telopea Park High School has some specialised programs. Narrabundah College is at the top end of the scale with its baccalaureate. These schools all have a certain niche, and people come from all over Canberra to go to them.
Mrs Carnell was also saying something which, I think, most educationalists in Australia realise. It is just commonsense. It is something that Mr Wood, no doubt Ms Szuty, and certainly I had when we went through the school system. I am not quite sure whether Mr Wood went to a state school. He went through the Queensland system and I went through the local ACT system. At primary school level, there certainly was some type of testing for basic numeracy and literacy skills to enable people to progress. I think that Mrs Carnell is quite right in saying that there can be improvements made at the primary school level. Some type of testing is needed to see whether children have the required skills to go on to high school so that they will not just be lost in the system. As she quite rightly said, sometimes it is a tragedy if a kid cannot read by Grade 6, as there may be no hope for them after that. That is a real problem which needs addressing. I cannot, for the life of me, see how anyone could take umbrage at that.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .