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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Tuesday, 30 March 2004) . . Page.. 1358 ..

Schedule 2. Schedule 2 part 2(1) of the bill deals with consequential amendments to the Board of Senior Secondary Studies Act 1997. It contains criteria for approving specialist education providers. The bill provides for the Board of Senior Secondary Studies to approve education providers to provide a course for a young person enrolled in years 11 to 12 at a government or non-government school at a place other than the school.

It is proposed that the terminology and the consequential amendments in Schedule 2 part 2.1 be amended for consistency with the rest of the Board of Senior Secondary Studies Act 1997. I propose that the reference to “approving a person” be amended to “approving an entity”, as that more accurately reflects the structure of special education providers.

On health and safety standards, I propose to amend the criteria for approval of specialist education providers in part 2.1 to read, “The provider will have premises and equipment that comply with any relevant Territory law about health and safety standards.” This will make the provision consistent with the language used in relation to the powers of the chief executive to approve education providers for a child enrolled in other than years 11 and 12 at a government school section. The term “facility” more accurately reflects what is operated by the special education providers. That is it.

Amendments agreed to.

Schedule 2, as amended, agreed to.

Dictionary.

MR PRATT (9.37): Mr Speaker, I move amendment No 27 circulated in my name [see schedule 3 at page 1376]. This amendment rewords the definition of corporal punishment to adhere to my amendment No 1. Self-defence or protection is not included in the definition of corporal punishment. To finish on a high note tonight, again I would seek to stress here that a lot of education stakeholders who are concerned about teachers’ welfare have indicated to us that teachers feel rather concerned about this issue of what constitutes action taken too far and seen as or defined as corporal punishment versus the appropriate restraining action that they may need to take to intervene in a fight between a couple of students, or more for that matter. So this is about the application of appropriate and reasonable physical force only to prevent physical injury to a person. If we do not have this in place we are going to cause teachers to lack confidence as to what action ought to be taken in difficult circumstances. One would not want to see injury occur because action was not taken in time. Unless we clean this up, that is the danger that we face in sorting this out.

MS GALLAGHER (Minister for Education, Youth and Family Services, Minister for Women and Minister for Industrial Relations) (9.30): The government will not be supporting this amendment for the same reasons that we did not support Mr Pratt’s amendment No 1. The suggested definition provides for two very different occurrences. Corporal punishment in its normal usage refers to a punishment and not to physical injury that results from self-defence.

Amendment negatived.

Dictionary agreed to.

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