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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Thursday, 26 August 2004) . . Page.. 4302 ..

The committee thought that it was incredibly important to look at this area for passing on that knowledge to people coming into the education area who want to be teachers and making sure that they are capable of teaching well into the future.

The committee recommended that the Canberra Institute of Technology consider the need for mechanisms that analyse recruitment issues, course demand and student enrolment levels from an institution-wide perspective to ensure that appropriate work force management strategies are developed and implemented. The committee had some discussions with the CIT on this issue and formed the view that, whilst the faculties needed to have the flexibility to be able to say what their needs were, the institute overall needed to have a body overseeing the issues concerning their anticipated levels and how they were going according to course enrolments, because course enrolments change over time and the different faculties would not know the overall situation of the institute. That is how that recommendation came about.

Recommendation 5 reads:

The Committee recommends that the Government work with the University of Canberra and the Australian Catholic University Signadou, to develop courses targeted at retraining teaching staff currently employed in the system in areas of Languages other than English, Information and Communication Technology, Science and Special Education.

The reason that that is so important is that that is where the area of need is greatest at the moment—not just in the ACT, but also across the country. A number of people said that we have plenty of teachers in the primary area and are able to fill those needs and we have teachers in lots of other areas, but we really need to make sure that we get trained people into the areas mentioned in the recommendation.

Recommendation 6 is about the government giving consideration to offering scholarships to undergraduate students in the areas of specialised subject shortage. That is the same as the issue I just talked about. Recommendation 7 is about the Department of Education and Training and the Catholic Education Office investigating the engaging of undergraduate science and maths teaching students to assist school students and teachers in secondary schools. That is to try to give those trainee teachers that experience, but also to help fill the gaps that we face in science and maths teaching in our high schools.

Recommendation 8 relates to the Department of Education and Training extending and marketing the accessibility of the teacher resources and professional development services available at the teaching and learning technology centre to all education sectors. The teaching and learning centre is located at the old Stirling campus of the Canberra College. The centre is not in a new building, but it has been made to look shiny and new. The centre is a fantastic resource. I know that a number of schools across the ACT already utilise the library and the other services within the centre, but I think that we need to make sure that everybody in the community is aware that that service is being provided.

The library within the teaching and learning centre has a delivery service and teachers do not need to go and visit the centre and do not need to worry about opening hours. They

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