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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 949 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

the students taking a test fail it, is it the reaction of your department not to inquire why this happened but rather to set a new test a little less difficult, presumably in the hope it will yield a higher pass rate so statistics look better?

MR STEFANIAK: I thank the member for the question. It is a very good question, but I can answer that that certainly is not the case. This Government, as part of Affirming the High School Years and as part of its 10 key results, wants to see 95 per cent of Year 10 students, which is about the realistic maximum, gain computer competencies. The competencies will be at three levels. There will be a basic level - not everyone can be absolutely excellent in any field - a credit level, as it were, and a very advanced level. The aim is that at the end of 2001 each student will have a certificate showing their degree of computer competency, ranging from satisfactory through to excellent. We aim to see that for 95 per cent of students. That is setting a very high standard.

As part and parcel of that, we needed to trial what test we would be using. What was trialled was set largely by computer people rather than educationalists. Some of the jargon was somewhat indecipherable. I do not know how good you are on computers, Mr Kaine, but I certainly would not be able to understand it. Quite clearly, a number of the students can do some of the things that were set. Whether they could understand the question was another matter. The whole idea of the trial was to iron out any bugs and come up with something that was reasonable but challenging and would achieve the aim. That is what we are in the process of doing.

Everyone across the system is intent of having a full trial. We are a little bit advanced on our original timing, so I would hope that by the end of this year we will have trialled all students to the extent that we can give them grades. I am hopeful that we can bring forward to the end of this year what we intended to do by the end of 2001, and that is assess the ability of students to handle information technology. It is crucially important that our students be able to handle information technology, to use it properly.

The Government, since putting greater emphasis on information technology, has provided a substantial information technology to our schools, and this is just a logical extension. I can certainly assure you that the department is very keen to test students as much as is realistically possible. As a government, we believe in the pursuit of excellence. That is something our education system here in Canberra does very well. Accordingly, the ultimate tests will have three different levels of achievement.

MR HARGREAVES: My question is to the Minister for Urban Services. At the bus interchanges at Woden, Belconnen and Tuggeranong there are security-type cameras. Can the Minister confirm that the cameras are keeping watch on customer safety, or are the cameras merely monitors designed to check bus employee workloads? Can the Minister say whether the cameras have a recording facility? If they do, what happens to the tapes? Are they wiped and recorded over, or are they archived?

MR SMYTH: I will have to check on the process. I am aware that we do have the cameras and we use them for security. I will get the member some further details.

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