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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2101 ..

MS McRAE (4.23): At long last. At last the Government has finally done some work. What a pity that it had to take a sending back of the report to get the beginning, the glimmer, of some sense on this issue.

I will raise a few concerns that I still have about the Government's response to the PAC report. The ABS figures and the new sort of measure of socioeconomic good and bad are important, but one note of caution I would like to put in is to somehow build in the equation for the out-of-area kids, because for a lot of our schools there is a very high level of enrolment from out of area. Whilst I am sure that the Minister's people will think of that, I would like to see some measure of that considered more thoroughly because it does not necessarily always correlate. We also really need to know how that relates to parental contribution because it is our suspicion that, even in a low income area with a lot of out-of-area parents, they are very keen to contribute. The correlation of where children live and where they go to school does not always add up to the maximum benefit for the school. As Mr Stefaniak indicates, it is certainly something that the Government has given some thought to, and I will be very interested to see how that translates when the equity fund comes into operation. I must say that it seems like a very small fund, but I guess we will test that only in the process of its use. For 100 schools, $55,000 does not add up to a lot, but we will see what it is that the schools require and how it comes out. I must say that at least it is a beginning and some recognition of the real equity issues that exist in our system and that came to light.

The Government sort of pointed out that they were going to do more work on recommendations 13, 14 and 15, and I must say that I will be very interested to see the work that is going to be done. They are the sorts of questions that are getting to the very heart of just what is a good educational experience for our children. I take Mr Stefaniak's point that the diversity within our system is very valuable, and it is not something that the Government will want to interfere with, or impose a standard set of experiences for every school. However, this seems to really invite almost a benchmarking exercise of what is good, what is bad, how much should be done, how much should not, and what is the best practice. It is almost a guide to schools about some of the variations.

Of course, I am quite familiar with the fact that school principals meet regularly and, pretty well across the system, people do have a reasonable idea of the variation; but I would be very interested to see, at the end of this work, whether we could have, without pointing fingers at different schools or trying to put any school up or down, some perhaps more focused discussion of what the best practices are, how we can enrich a child's experience, and not necessarily just throw money at it. I hope that, at the end of the further work that is going to be done with that, some very helpful and informative extra work is going to come. I must say that I am very pleased to see that that is very definitely on the agenda. Parents do really need to know what the range of compulsory learning activities are, what are out of areas, and what the range of choices are. For the most part, our eight key learning areas cover that, but the variation within the eight key learning areas does mean that it is difficult to get a handle on what best practice is.

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