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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 3 Hansard (26 May) . . Page.. 577 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

The approach to this assessment will give us very sound information. Parents and schools will be able to track the performance of individual students; and we, as a government, will be able to monitor the performance of our ACT education system.

This Government, with other States and Territories, and as an extension of the national commitment I spoke of earlier, has recently signed an agreement to monitor student achievement at a number of points in a child's school career. This agreement endorses the following strategies:

Early assessment in the first year of school to identify and support students at risk

Assessment and reporting of the ACT achievement against the national benchmarks in years 3 and 5 and later in years 7 and 9 when benchmarks become available;

This benchmarking information will eventually include non-government schools with government schools data.

In addition, the Government has recently recognised the importance of early intervention in the first years of school. Primary schools will receive an additional $400,000 to meet the learning needs of students through targeted early intervention programs. This funding is in addition to the $5.3m to support our students in the high school and primary school learning assistance program.

The Government has also established a literacy and numeracy fund, following the sale of Charnwood High School. This fund will generate continuing resources to support the literacy programs in our schools. Let there be no mistake, Mr Speaker: This Government is determined to make very sure our students acquire the highest standard of literacy they are capable of achieving; and we will take practical steps, both immediate and longer term, to fulfil that determination. Members who attended the literacy strategy launch on Monday cannot have failed to be impressed by the level of professional skill and dedication that has been provided for the development of the strategy.

I have every confidence that the national goals for literacy will be fulfilled with the same level of professionalism and to the same excellent standard as the ACT school system has historically achieved in meeting the needs of its students. I commend to this Assembly the work done by my department on enhanced literacy outcomes for every ACT school student. I formally table the following papers:

1998 literacy matters - Preschool-Year 10 - A literacy strategy

Ministerial statement, 26 May 1998.

The literacy strategy document is the one that I launched. I move:

That the Assembly takes note of the papers.

Debate (on motion by Mr Corbell) adjourned.

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