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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Thursday, 26 August 2004) . . Page.. 4301 ..

between students and learning. That remains true in spite of teaching having moved a long way from being just chalk and talk, if it ever was just that.

There has been much discussion in the community of the pressure today on teachers and the education system, yet, perhaps the biggest pressure the system faces is in ensuring that there are adequate numbers of teachers with the requisite skills in the requisite subjects. With a large number of our teaching work force due to retire, we face not just the issue of replacement of the number retiring, but also the more pressing issue of a loss of years of cumulative knowledge and skill.

This report has attempted to look at these and related issues and make practical recommendations on ways in which to deal with them. I hope that all parties involved in the delivery of education in the territory will find this report useful. We have, without doubt, an excellent education system in the ACT, on a par with and exceeding the rest of the country. It is imperative that we all act to protect the future of our education system by making sure that we have the teachers there in the future; after all, we are talking about our learning future and the future learning of our children.

It was a great pleasure for the committee to conduct this inquiry into teacher numbers, recruitment and training. The committee started the inquiry at the beginning of the year, after resolving in December last year to conduct the inquiry. The committee has come up with 16 recommendations that range across a variety of areas. The committee received 21 submissions and had six public hearings and four site visits. The site visits were to the Gold Creek middle school in Nicholls, the Department of Education and Training’s teaching and learning technologies resource centre in Stirling, which I have to say is an excellent centre, the Saints Peter and Paul Catholic primary school in Garran, and the Department of Education and Training’s recruitment centre in Higgins.

The committee made 16 recommendations. The first recommendation reads:

The Committee recommends that the Government work with the University of Canberra and the Australian Catholic University Signadou to develop data on graduate teacher satisfaction and participation in the teaching profession on completion of their studies over the longer term. The Committee further recommends that this data should capture issues relating to: managing student behaviour; collegial relationships; parent/teacher relationships; and lesson plans.

The second recommendation reads:

The Committee recommends that the Government develop formal mechanisms to strengthen collaboration between the University of Canberra and the Australian Catholic University Signadou and schools, particularly in the area of pre-service training and field experience.

As to that recommendation, a relationship is already established between those two teacher training organisations and a number of schools, but we would like to see that more formalised. Recommendation 3 reads:

The Committee recommends that the Government provide for increased numbers of appropriately skilled teachers and principals to be placed in education faculties as teacher educators for specified durations.

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