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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2353 ..

Mr Moore: I am just asking. I am not making a comment either way. I am asking would you hide information. You are always saying we should put everything out in the public arena-except this one.

MR BERRY: I would not hide the information but I will not support league tables which show the difference between the performance of teachers, the difference between the performance of schools and the difference between the performance of students. There is in place now an agreed process where assessments are done in years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Under that process the information is given to parents. The information is assessed against national benchmarks and the territory is given a result. But it does not involve the sort of process which is anticipated from the consultation process which the minister has put in place. He said he would not do that but he is now encouraging this as an option.

If this minister goes down that path it will undoubtedly damage our education system-Mr Moore knows it will damage our education system-and cause some schools to be abandoned. Everybody knows that there are difference performance levels in our education system for some ethnic groups and for people with different socioeconomic backgrounds. Once you start this business you will end up creating a multi-tiered public system where some schools with people from better socioeconomic backgrounds do well and other schools will do worse. That is typical of the way the well-off middle class design an education system. They do not have a concern for people down at the bottom end of the socioeconomic scale; they do not understand the difficulties that these people face in dealing with day to day life.

If you contemplate those sorts of things in an education system, you are contemplating disaster. This has been tried in other countries and it is not a good process. For example, schools were closed in the UK because they were abandoned by parents who had the mobility to move on to other schools. Of course, people at the other end of the socioeconomic scale were left in schools which are funded according to the ever diminishing numbers that stay. This is the education system that has been put in place by conservatives who do not understand these issues.

Labor is committed to an education system which will produce quality outcomes, without discrimination, for all classes within society. If the government follows up the approach I have outlined, I fear that the people who do not have the wherewithal will be discriminated against. Of course, they will be subject to worse outcomes. Some members of the Liberal Party, particularly Dr Kemp, have a fixation with reading, writing and arithmetic-the old three R's. Of course, Dr Kemp also has a fascination with forcing or pushing students in the public education system into the private sector. Indeed, voucher education is one aspect which he actively supports. I would like to see the local Liberals reject that but I bet they do not.

The last thing I want to talk about before I sit down is another matter which emerged recently from the unravelling of the building social capital proposal. I heard Ms Carnell and the Minister for Education say how committed they are to providing special services in our education system for people with disabilities. I have visited a few of them with other members of the education committee. I have learnt in the last few days that the government had decided-this is the government that just recently said, "We are committed to building social capital"-to remove teaching staff, I think teacher

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