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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2232 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

Within special education we see nothing. We see nothing in the budget papers that says that this Government is in any way doing anything to include more people in mainstream education. Yet I am sure it is. We have no output measure for that, and we have nothing in the outlook, in the priorities or anywhere in here to tell from the budget papers just what this Government is trying to do about the big issues that are really important. The violence in schools report came out only a year ago and had some very clear recommendations. I am very disappointed to see that nothing was done about one of them, and that was for a much better integrated approach across different departments to dealing with children at risk. We see nothing of that here.

The literacy question is sort of dealt with in departmental initiatives, which shows some reaction to the types of pressures that are on the system. They suggested increased support for literacy in the early years, through the extension of the first steps program and other literacy programs to build on the national benchmark initiatives. We do see some evidence of some of the things that are being done, but not in any way a comprehensive list that checks back to say, "What are we trying to do? Whom are we trying to do it for? How are we getting close to that? What has changed in the last year? What is going to change in the next year?". That seems to me to be the big picture that is missing. Perhaps it is priorities that are necessary; perhaps it is some check back; perhaps it is some other referencing. It does not all have to be in the budget papers.

If you read these budget papers, you have absolutely no notion of how the major issues that I have raised are being dealt with. There is absolutely no mention of the Ministerial Advisory Council on Government Schooling. That council is tackling some of the most difficult and contentious issues in the education system. It is their work that is actually going to make some qualitative difference to educational outcomes. Yet in the budget papers that then put money against the things that are most important, we have no measure of that. It intensely troubles me that, in a department as big as this and as crucial as this, we seem to be pushing away the qualitative work that is being done and pushing away what is perhaps working at the school level, at the ministerial advisory council level or even within the department. We have no measure of it.

It is almost ridiculous to read the things that are initiatives. I understand why they are here; they are the ones that are funded. This is important for accountancy; I understand that. In terms of what a government has to present in budget papers, it is the nuts and bolts and the money. But it seems to me that it just leaves a gap here, that opens up for ridicule. To include a new high school; extending literacy programs; a review of the learning assessments program, which is one of the major initiatives of the year; complete implementation of school-based management; and so on, as if they are all of equal importance and as if they are the only things, is the problem. This reads as if they are the only qualitative changes that are happening in the system. To me, that is a matter of grave concern and seems to leave open the accusation that we are not getting very far in achieving some of the major objectives of what the Department of Education and Training should be on about and that we are perhaps allowing no change to ever happen by not demanding that our budget papers actually reflect not just the quantity of the nuts and bolts but also the qualitative changes that we need to see in the education system each year.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.

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