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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (22 August) . . Page.. 3144 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

My department has invited a wide range of experts to be part of the panel that assesses the tenders we receive. This is something that perhaps Ms Tucker and Mr Berry do not appreciate: they are the kind of people you might well have on a working party. In that respect, these suggestions become somewhat unnecessary too.

We have invited representation from the P&C; the Australian Education Union; Fitness ACT; which is the peak body representing all fitness organisations and individuals; the Heart Foundation and the Primary Principals Association, as well as the manager of my department's community partnerships section and the department's executive officer for PE and sport. That is a very wide range of people to be on a tender panel, and they include what I consider to be key stakeholders.

I believe that my department is setting about this task in a very professional and careful manner. I do not believe that setting up a working party will produce any better results. I have already indicated some of the real problems with that. The calibre of the representatives on the tender assessment panel speaks for itself. These people have a wide range of expertise. They are professionals in the area of children's issues, and health and fitness issues.

Mr Speaker, you may wonder why we do not have sufficient staff in our department to do this work. Well, health and fitness assessment is a highly specialised area. It requires specific skills and equipment. Classroom teachers do not have the qualifications or the expertise, and nor should they be expected to, to assess students in this particular area.

There are currently some 21,000 primary students in 71 government schools, and the sheer size of this project means that we require an outside source to provide this service. Having one organisation conducting the program also ensures consistent assessment and reporting to schools and the ACT Department of Education and Community Services.

The workload of teachers would be increased and results obtained would be inconsistent if tests were conducted at an individual school level. The cost to the government of setting up a staffing unit to conduct the assessment program across the ACT would also be far greater than using experts to do this.

We have specified, Mr Speaker, that the contractor will provide to the manager, community partnerships section, ACT Department of Education and Community Services, by 30 June 2002 and 30 November 2002, and at the same time intervals if the contract is extended, a report including the following performance indicators: the number of schools assessed; the number of students assessed; the number of additional reports provided to parents/carers; the number of in-service sessions provided to schools; the categories of health and fitness assessment by age group, gender and year; the number of sample programs provided to schools-crucially important-and any other relevant information.

I think we are on the right track, Mr Speaker, with the way we are handling this health and fitness program. I firmly believe the only tangible result of supporting Ms Tucker's proposal, and indeed Mr Berry's amendments, would be delaying the implementation of the program for our children, and accruing all the costs associated with that.

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