Page 2625 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 June 2005
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
whatever put together for cooking classes mean that a teacher of home economics has the princely sum of $2.50 per student per class to spend on ingredients. Mr Speaker, apart from learning how to boil an egg and make a cup of tea, there is not very much that you could do in home economics on $2.50 per student per class. This situation arises because the government does not fund the course appropriately and relies upon voluntary contributions from parents to top things up.
It is not just about excursions. It is about basic materials to do basic work in the classroom. It is about ingredients for home economics, it is about art supplies, it is about metal and metalwork—it is about all of these sorts of things which are not available to students and students are not getting the full advantage of their curriculum because the government does not fund these activities.
One of the things that have really concerned many parents in the government school system is the decline in maintenance. When I first came to this job and I talked to my colleagues interstate about the issues that they thought were important, they kept talking to me about school maintenance. I was surprised because I really did not think that school maintenance would be such an issue in the ACT, which has a relatively new infrastructure. But school maintenance is becoming an increasing problem and it is one that parents are particularly concerned about. They are concerned about the impression that their school makes. Schools which have open days in order to encourage students to enrol find it very difficult to make a good impression if their school looks down at heel and a bit ratty around the edges and if paintwork needs to be done. We find that this is a problem everywhere.
We would be better off spending our money on maintenance and topping up curriculum areas such as home economics and art than on some of the things that I have called vanity projects such as interactive whiteboards. Interactive whiteboards are about the medium and not what is taught. I think there are considerable failings in what is taught in ACT government schools.
Mr Seselja touched on the issue of the failure of this government to address the issue of children with disabilities in non-government schools. He also asked questions in estimates relating to numeracy indicators and the comparison with other countries, particularly Singapore.
Ms Gallagher: We come fourth in the world.
MRS DUNNE: It was particularly interesting to look at where we come in the world. However, the minister gets all hoity-toity when we mention Singapore. She said that she wanted to go to Singapore and find out what they were doing—why they were achieving so much better than we were. I think it is very important that she do that because she might learn something about the way we teach.
In the latest survey Australian year 8 students achieved a mathematics scores in TIMSS—the trends in international mathematics and science study—of 505. The ACT does very well with 538, and the international average is 467. But all of these figures are well below Singapore at 605 points. In addition to that, there is a higher percentage of children in Singapore reaching advanced levels in their mathematics studies. The
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .