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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (18 April) . . Page.. 1045 ..

MS TUCKER (11.04): I would like to make a few points about the Government's response to the committee's report on the voluntary parent contribution scheme. While some of the recommendations were taken up, I have some concerns because I feel that the key recommendations, which obviously are connected to budgetary commitments, were not accepted. The committee made recommendations which had budgetary implications because it had genuine and serious concerns about equity in our public school system. Several of the recommendations were concerned with that issue, as were many of the public submissions.

The response to recommendation 1 states up front, "We have a bottom line here for education. That is not changing". The response to recommendation 3 is that voluntary contributions are not part of the school funding base; they represent discretionary funding. We keep hearing that. I do not know why it is; but, if you talk to schools or if you are a parent of a child in a school, that is not what you are told. You are told that if you do not pay voluntary contributions the school will not have chalk and books. There seems to be some problem of communication. It does not appear to people in the community that it is discretionary funding. Because the Government keeps claiming that it is, they are not committed to making up any shortfall in this funding. The obvious consequence of that is that socioeconomically disadvantaged schools that feel that they need this money for basics are going to be in a difficult situation.

Recommendation 6 recommends the establishment of a fund to assist in participation generally, in the extracurricular activities or whatever. The response is, "Leave it to the schools". Students from a school in Campbell may go on an excursion to New Zealand, but students from a school in Tuggeranong may not be able to go to the local national park because for many of them it is very difficult to find the money. The recommendation on an appropriate definition of a disadvantaged school was not given any serious consideration. The response said, "We already have those sorts of definitions, but we will look at the matter". It seems to me that within the ACT there are schools that are seriously disadvantaged and some that are not quite so seriously disadvantaged, but surely we should be looking at this in a more flexible manner and being responsive to the particular needs of schools at different times, because obviously they are changing. I am aware that processes are in place to some extent, but the committee was saying, "Let us be more responsive and not quite so black and white".

The response to recommendation 12 was that the Government has a policy on voluntary contributions and discriminatory practices. That has always been there, but that has not been very reassuring to parents of children or to children who are discriminated against. We have a policy, but the reality is different. Why is the reality different? Schools are stretched and finding it difficult, and it is not going to get easier. It is a question of the Government accepting responsibility, not saying, "Schools are not allowed to discriminate. We are okay. We have said that". If the reality is that discrimination is happening, then you have to work out why and do something to prevent it.

Recommendation 13 requests a fund to finance core high school and college elective subjects. The Government's response was, "No. It would be administratively cumbersome", and so on. That is a perfectly reasonable response on one hand, because you probably do not want to be breaking up the normal funding system, pulling out money, then regiving it and so on. Once again, the committee was obviously

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