Page 1478 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 6 April 2005
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opportunity for the territory here. Obviously, if this lady is correct, something needs to be done very quickly, now being 6 April. I think the government needs to have a quick look and just see in fact if it is feasible and sensible to run this rally here. It could well be a very significant benefit to the territory.
People in the territory have obviously been concerned for some time. We do not have a dragway anymore. We also have lost the V8s. This may well be a very good event. I do not know sufficient about it to say, “Yes, this is brilliant, this is an absolute must.” But the government obviously should be able to do that and do that fairly quickly. It may well be an excellent event that we can get. I urge the government to have a look at that and, if it is a very good event, do what is necessary.
Schools
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (6.09): I want to refer to two articles from yesterday’s and today’s Sydney Morning Herald. I see it as one of my duties in the Assembly to bring to the attention of the Assembly things going on in the broader world related to things that the Greens are interested in. That was said with tongue in cheek, for those who did not recognise it.
The first article appears in today’s paper and is titled “Uni easier if the old school tie is public.” This is of great interest and is something that perhaps should be broadcast more widely to people who scrimp and save, believing that sending their children to a selective high school or a private school will advantage them in later life. The article states:
A study of 12,500 first-year students from Melbourne’s Monash University found that students from comprehensive—
read “ordinary high”—
schools outshone those from government selective, independent and Catholic schools.
The study supports findings of similar studies from Western Australia and Britain and, according to its co-author, Ian Dobson, had implications for the “under-funding” of public schools and private and selective schools’ claims to offer an extra-value education.
Dr Dobson said private students have an advantage come exam time because of the resources “devoted to their education at secondary school, but this advantage evaporates at university.
“Once on a level playing field, students from non-selective government schools tend to do better,” he wrote …
That is of extreme interest because an awful lot of people do believe, in this current climate where private schools are being funded so well at the federal level in particular, that they are doing their children a favour and investing in their later life by sending them to private schools. I hope the results of that survey become more broadly known.
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