Page 1210 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 May 2006
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provides can be challenged and encouraged to immerse themselves more fully and more rigorously in the academic life of the community. The great collaboration between the ACT government and the ANU started today, born of that shared ideal. The government, through the Department of Education and Training, and very much the hard work of Michele Bruniges and the team that has assisted her on this, working collaboratively with the ANU, has, over the past six months or more of quite intense activity, got this project off the ground.
All courses delivered at the ANU secondary college have been designed by and will be delivered by ACT government college teachers, with the support and expertise of their university colleagues. A very strong partnership has been developed to ensure that the courses can meet these very high-achieving students both now and in the future.
The government will always have an abiding interest, represented through this particular initiative, in seeing that those who emerge from our fantastic schools are equipped as fully as possible to grasp the opportunities that life will present—equipped not just in terms of good grades but with a hunger for learning, with initiative, with a capacity to innovate and with an understanding of where learning can take any individual in life if they so wish to pursue the opportunities.
There is enormously strong interest in this new opportunity. Well over 100 applications were received from the government school sector. Sixty-five of those have been selected, and they started their new college today. A careful selection process was pursued to ensure that all the selected applicants were in a strong position to benefit from the program. The initial focus is on chemistry, maths and physics. Parents of current year 10 students are already inquiring about the program for 2007 when, I am sure, we can expect a much larger field of applicants for its second year of operation.
It is also notable that the non-government school sector is participating in this initiative. It is very much a joint college. That has presented some issues for the territory—issues that have been worked through with the ANU. In addition to the 65 ACT government students, each of whom studies for free at the college, consistent with our obligation and determination that education be free, there are 45 students from the non-government sector. The interest has been enormous and will continue to grow. We will treat this year very much as a trial of what I think will prove to be an outstanding success and one in relation to which students and parents are queuing up to be involved.
MS PORTER: Can the Chief Minister tell the Assembly what opportunities will flow to ACT secondary students from the opening of the ANU secondary college?
MR STANHOPE: As I have indicated—and I will be quite brief—the opportunities are enormous for a group of highly gifted students who have excelled in maths and science to be able to continue their learning, as students within the college system, at a college within the Australian National University specialising in the presentation of mathematics, chemistry and physics, with the aid and assistance of staff from the Australian National University—a university now recognised, without dispute by any other university in Australia, as the pre-eminent research and teaching university in Australia. It is probably fair to say it is the pre-eminent Southern Hemisphere university. That is the status that the Australian National University has achieved.
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