Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (9 April) . . Page.. 769 ..

MR MOORE: My question is to Mr Stefaniak as Minister for Education. Mr Stefaniak, in February the ACT Council of Parents and Citizens Associations wrote to you, following a series of letters, with reference to data from the 1996 midyear learning assistance assessment. They asked for aggregated data for the system in the following terms:

1. the number of students in each Year level in primary and high school and the number identified for learning assistance in numeracy and literacy.

2. the highest and lowest levels of identified need in numeracy and literacy for each Year, as a proportion of the relevant Year cohort, experienced by a school across the system.

3. the number of primary and high schools according to different levels of identified needs in numeracy and literacy at each Year level assessed. We requested the number of schools with levels of identified need falling within the following ranges: less than 10%, 10-19%, 20-29%, 30-39% and over 40%. We also requested the total number of schools for which results are provided for each Year level.

I am just coming to my question, Mr Speaker. I feel that this is necessary. The letter continued:

I wish to emphasise that Council is not interested in identifying particular schools and none of the requests were for information which would identify a particular school or schools.

Your reply, Mr Stefaniak, dated 21 March 1997, was basically, "Too bad". It said, "I am pleased you would not use the information to compare the performance of individual schools in the assessment program, but we will not provide the information". Minister, are you running a closed government department because you are frightened of the public learning of facts about ACT education needs with reference to learning assistance, or will you now accept that this was, for some reason, a slip-up and make that information available?

MR STEFANIAK: I thank the member for the question. I do not know whether the member has had a chance to catch up with the P and C council in the last 24 hours or so. Maybe he has not. I understand that members of the P and C council had a meeting with the department in relation to this issue yesterday morning and were quite satisfied with the responses from the department.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .