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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Wednesday, 30 June 2004) . . Page.. 3095 ..

courtesy and inclusion. My daughter’s class runs a program called SCARF, which stands for sharing, co-operation, acceptance, respect and friendship. Those are the values that my daughter is being taught in her classroom. There are scarves hanging all over the room so that children are constantly reminded what it means and how they must conduct themselves in their classroom.

Mr Pratt did not refer to what the Liberal opposition defines as core values. He continually stated that there was a lack of core values in schools. Mr Pratt has issued press statements that state that many ACT government schools are not serious about the teaching of values to students. During the estimates committee process I asked Mr Pratt whether he could name some of the schools that he was concerned about. If some schools were not incorporating values education into the school environment I would also be worried about them. But at no stage has Mr Pratt given me any example of a school that he is concerned about—a school in which he believes those values are not being taught.

As Ms Dundas said earlier, this motion, which is about a supposed, or alleged, lack of values education, is perpetuating a myth that non-government schools are addressing these issues a lot better than do government schools. The shadow minister for education is peddling that myth or perception in the ACT without any evidence to support his claim. Mr Pratt rattled off statistics about how many students had been suspended from government schools but he could not balance those figures with the number of students that had been suspended or expelled from non-government schools, as he did not know what those figures were. He referred to the government system as a whole and said, “Over 1,000 students in one year were suspended, so the system is in disarray.”

It is really irresponsible of Mr Pratt to perpetuate the myth that the system is in crisis and that it is not supporting the young people and students attending those schools. Every day 37,000 children attend government schools. There have been no expulsions from those schools, which educate all children. Over the period of one year there have been 1,000 or more suspensions that could have lasted half a day, less than half a day or one day. Students can be suspended for a maximum of five days for a whole range of reasons.

Students are suspended as a last resort. Prior to suspension a whole range of mechanisms is put in place. At the end of the day we sometimes have students in our system that are difficult to manage. Schools do a tremendous job in trying to ensure that they have access to appropriate education. In January, after the Prime Minister’s attack on public schools, the Australian Council of State School Organisations weighed into the values debate and said, very nicely:

Public schools are obliged to accept all students who wish to attend, without qualification, including those rejected or excluded by non-government schools.

Discipline issues are sometimes evident but schools employ a sophisticated range of strategies to ensure orderly learning environments prevail.

No public school principal has the level of autocracy and lack of social accountability available to their private school colleagues. For example, an elite private school policy in Melbourne reads:

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