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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (30 November) . . Page.. 3527 ..
MR STEFANIAK (continuing):
The educational outcomes of the delegation visit include the fact that 49 students from Hong Kong have applied to come and study in Canberra and the ACT Department of Education and Community Services has established a working party to develop short-term professional development courses for Chinese teachers, with an emphasis on English language, IT and pedagogy. Apart from getting people here as full-fee-paying students, one of the big potentials for doing business is in training Chinese teachers in English, especially by having them come here for courses which are of less than 90 days duration. That is particularly easy in terms of immigration requirements; much easier, in fact, than longer periods. That was particularly attractive to the various Chinese officials we spoke to.
Also, sister school relationships have been established between schools in Canberra and China and we have now received more than 100 applications from Chinese students wishing to study in Canberra government schools in 2001. Linkages have also been formed between the UC, ANU and CIT and education commissions in Beijing and Hangzhou.
In each of the cities I visited, I met with high-level education officials and influential parents. The Department of Education and Community Services is progressing a number of business initiatives agreed to in China. Those include establishing a Canberra classroom in a school in Hangzhou to prepare fee-paying students for study in our schools and the establishment of a Canberra office to provide information to Chinese students and parents about education programs in Canberra.
There is a very big market there and we are well placed to get significant benefits from that market. For example, each year 12 million students in China want to go into our equivalent of year 10. Not all of them make it. Each year four million Chinese students finish year 12 and want to go to university and there are only 1.5 million university places there. That makes Australia a very attractive option, as members can see from the report. The Chinese are also quite impressed with our home stay arrangements and the fact that Canberra is a very safe city compared with similar cities in Europe and the United States which are also fairly popular destinations.
I look forward to ongoing benefits for the ACT arising from the visit and from the continuing work being done in China by the ACT Department of Education and Community Services and its partners in Team Canberra.
MR HUMPHRIES (Chief Minister, Minister for Community Affairs, Attorney-General and Treasurer) (3.46): Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I ask for leave to make a ministerial statement concerning reconciliation.
Leave granted.
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