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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1667 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

It was noted that children who are violent at school or who are bullying other children may be acting out behaviour learnt at home, or it may be the result of low self-esteem and this is the only opportunity they have to have any power over other people. We need to recognise this. We need to look at children at school and recognise that other influences also affect their behaviour. There is nothing to be gained by blaming the child at school. It has to be looked at in terms of the family and the community as well.

I cannot stress enough the need to help families and schools to find ways to deal with violence and aggression. It is too late, when the child has grown up and has learnt no ways of dealing with anger and other emotions except by hitting out and hurting others, to then try to address the problem. There is no point in looking after a violent event and saying, "Well, what could we have done?". We need to intervene early and we need to try to resolve these problems. We must consider the services and support which are provided here in this community, and many of the recommendations of this report focus on these aspects of changing violent behaviour in our community.

We looked particularly at schools, and it should be noted and recognised that schools work hard for whole-of-school behaviour management and, in most cases, are successful. But these things do not happen just out of thin air; they do not happen without support and without resources. Schools need our support. They are not all equal; they are not all the same. As Kerrie Tucker mentioned, there are differences in what moneys they can raise within the community. There are differences in the way kids come to school. Teachers need our support. Teachers need support through training and recognition of the job they do. I think at times we do not always give teachers due respect. They perform an important role in our community in looking after our children and developing our children, and we need to continue to provide that support to teachers. Children come to school with different levels of socialisation and different types of behaviour, and there must be some mechanisms to recognise this and to work in different ways with children. It is not a case of one size fits all when dealing with children, so we need to ensure that there are off-line approaches and flexible approaches to deal with kids who are not fitting in. Expulsion, at times, is not the way to go; nor is suspension.

As has been mentioned previously, where do these children go who are out of the school system? In a community where two parents work, often there is no-one at home. Are they running around the streets? Are they getting into problems? And are they going to come back into the school system? I think kids that end up disconnected from the school system have a lot of problems. They find it very difficult to fit back in. We need to recognise that and find ways of dealing with it. We need as well to look at off-line programs of primary schools that are localised, so that children are not expected to travel across Canberra; programs that are flexible enough to respond to the needs of those children and that are timely. There should not be waiting lists of six months. We should be able to provide the assistance when it is needed, early, when problems arise. We need to look at alternative approaches to schooling, so that we do not lose children who find that this current curriculum is not relevant. There are positive programs now and they are doing an excellent job, but those who are involved need to know that they have community support and that there will be adequate and continuing funds.

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