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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (13 May) . . Page.. 1313 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

Ms Tucker actually mentioned a number of those in passing in her speech. I will come later to a couple of issues she raised in relation to the Ombudsman's report in relation to consultation, Mr Speaker.

Firstly, I think it needs to be said that, by moving the School Without Walls program to Dickson College, the Government has not ended alternative education in the ACT; it has instead re-established it. However SWOW functioned as a school when it opened 23 years ago, it is certainly questionable whether over the past several years it was functioning properly. To appreciate the urgent need for the Government to act, I think you have to understand a number of things. You have to understand the needs of students at SWOW. They might be there for only four years of their education; but, if for one year they do not receive proper or adequate education, 25 per cent of their opportunity in high school is down the drain.

The second thing that needs to be considered, Mr Speaker, is how the situation at SWOW in recent years has developed, which really prompted the department, and certainly prompted me as Minister and this Government as a government, to act. I think we would have been derelict in our duty to those students and to the school community in the ACT generally if we had not acted. The facts and figures that I cite now, Mr Speaker, and the events to which I refer are from sworn affidavits prepared for use by the department in the SWOW Supreme Court proceedings. Some of those matters are as follows. For example, by 1996, enrolments for Years 11 and 12 amounted to just 14 students. Only 32 high school students were enrolled at SWOW. To cater for this enrolment level, staffing comprised two full-time teachers, two teachers at four days a week and a bursar. One of the most intolerable aspects of the way the school operated was that it was not possible for the department to determine whether any particular student at the school was receiving any education at all. Mr Speaker, some teachers at the school, it seemed, refused to keep class attendance rolls. Attendance at the school, let alone at individual classes, was a very varied thing.

While in 1996 notionally there were 57 students enrolled at the school, it was common for there to be only 12 or 15 students at the school at any one time. At the time of the review of SWOW in June-July 1996, only 46 notional enrolments could be verified by the department. These low turn-up figures meant that classes were often unable to proceed, having either too few or, at times, no students in attendance. Members should realise that many of the students enrolled were under the school leaving age. The department, I as Minister and, through me, the Government have a legal and moral duty to ensure that such students receive an education. Where classes did occur, sometimes they were held in cafes in town.

Members will be further interested to learn that some class teachers actually refused to complete student assessment reports. Perhaps at this point members will not be surprised when I inform them that the claim which has often been made, that SWOW achieves higher academic results than other schools, is a myth. While individual students from SWOW who actually sit the TER may perform well, the fact that only one did so in 1996 hardly constitutes an outstanding academic achievement. Furthermore, while 60 per cent of all students enrolled in ACT colleges sit for the TER, 25 per cent at best of those enrolled at SWOW did so.

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