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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1866 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

I see that still in the Government's paper they claim as one of the benefits of school-based management this capacity to convert staff relief resources into cash and vice versa for greater flexibility. I have said before that this is an issue of major concern to me, and it remains an issue of major concern. I cannot see how this is a fair and equitable process. If teachers are sick, teachers are sick, and they need relief. If a school has gone and converted all its staff relief resources into cash and then suddenly six teachers are taken ill, what is the school meant to do? These resources are very costly to replace. It is something that I am not convinced is for the good of the management of our schools.

I understand that many schools look at this relief fund with great glee, because it is a very rich fund; but, again, I cannot see how it improves student outcomes or the running of the school. It leads to inevitable pressure on the teachers who are not sick and puts a great deal of drama into a school when you have a very nasty flu going around, as it is at the moment, and suddenly you have a very large number of teachers not available. What do you do if you have no more relief funds? There are contingency funds; but contingency funds could not cover something as expensive as perhaps six teachers being out for a whole week in a school that has already used up its staff relief funds, let us say, on a spending splurge early in a year.

These sorts of inequities and difficulties have to be monitored. I really worry about this business, because it is a removal of the right for children to have a teacher taking care of them in their own classroom setting or in the right ratio. Inevitably, if the relief fund runs out, children will be sharing classes with others, they will not have a relief teacher there and they will have a less adequate educational experience. I think that this is an area that has to be watched with very careful concern.

The equity program came under great scrutiny early in the year and was amended by the Minister after quite a deal of outcry. It is an issue that I know the Minister has his ministerial advisory committee looking at. It is an issue that I am extremely interested in, because it is very difficult. I have no qualms about saying that this is an exceptionally difficult issue. For historical reasons, we have relied on the Commonwealth's definition of disadvantaged schools because it has come from the disadvantaged schools fund and it has been a Commonwealth responsibility to distribute these funds. On that basis, the ACT has come up with only one or two schools that actually fit into that category. It being a national category, one would expect that very few schools in the ACT would be as disadvantaged as other schools around Australia.

However, what we have to deal with here is the relativities within our own system, never mind the rest of Australia. So, I will be very interested to see whether we can come up with a better definition of who needs this equity support, not just through the equity programs as they have been defined, and how to better meet those needs within our system, with our own definitions and comparisons, rather than a national one. I know that the ACT Council of P and C Associations has been grappling with this issue. I know that many other jurisdictions have tried to deal with this issue. I understand that it is fraught with difficulty. But I urge the Minister to keep his advisory committee working pretty hard and long, and to provide them with as much information as they need,

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