Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (2 April) . . Page.. 1229 ..

Ms Gallagher: Like reducing class sizes?

MR STEFANIAK: Ms Gallagher interjects, "Class sizes."It was the previous government that put money in its last budget, with money put aside for successive budgets, to reduce, after a few years, class sizes to 21 in kindergarten to year 2 in government schools. It was the previous government which put money aside, which employed in the first year some 30 or 40 extra teachers to cover that. We incurred a bit of criticism from the non-government schools because they could not possibly match this initiative, and this led to some further adjustments to enable us to perhaps assist. This clearly kept the ACT at the forefront of public education, and in fact enhanced what had been done.

I am delighted to see that Premier Carr is now following the good policy in the ACT by doing similar things in New South Wales. There are a few areas in which we can follow some of his good policy, too. But, again, these are major initiatives which were started or were well underway in the first 18 months of the previous government.

Mr Speaker, I am a very proud product of the ACT education system. When I was at school the system happened to be run by New South Wales, and some of the teachers who taught me are still in the ACT. It has always been an excellent system. Like Ms Gallagher, I am certainly very proud to have gone through it. Nevertheless, I have always accepted-and I accepted as minister-that we have a very vibrant private education system. In fact, my two little kids are now in a Catholic school, mainly because my wife is a very good Catholic. I suppose if I had my druthers, I would probably put them into a public school, but I must say I am very happy with where they are. It is a good little school.

What impressed me when I was minister was the way the systems complement each other. There is a need to maintain the excellence in both systems. If anything, I noticed that some schools in the non-government sector probably did not have the same access to resources that the government sector could provide. That was not really across the sector, but I certainly saw areas where IT resources in non-government primary schools were not the same as those in government primary schools. So I think it is absolute nonsense to say that all of our non-government schools are incredibly well off and do not need assistance.

As my colleagues have said, 38 per cent of kids in the ACT go to non-government schools, and 44 per cent of year 7 to 10 kids go to non-government schools. I would be very concerned to see any great winding back of assistance by government to non-government schools because, if this happened, we might end up with a situation-I have a vague recollection of this as an 11 or 12-year-old; certainly I have read reports about it-similar to the one when the Catholic bishop of Canberra and Goulburn threatened to send all the kids at the Catholic schools in Goulburn to the state school system, and I think that precipitated state aid. I would hate to see anything like that happen.

I would caution the minister about a number of things in relation to the non-government sector. Firstly, be aware of the figures in the report. Have a very good look at things like the interest subsidy scheme. I think Mr Corbell's comments were really off the mark in this respect. The schools put in what they need and what they want in respect of short-

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .