Page 2261 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 16 August 2006
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behind a demoralised public education system and spiralling costs to cover the adjustment which will need to be met through increasing demand on teachers and by selling off community land in suburbs robbed of their schools. There are challenges facing public education, but questions asked and ministers’ and departmental officials’ responses at estimates committee hearings indicate that there has been no concerted analysis of those problems and how to address them in the ACT.
One of the challenges Australia-wide, which we are experiencing here, is a shift to non-government schools, which is seen to undermine the viability of government systems. Perhaps we should call that “public schools”. That shift has been encouraged by increased federal government funding to the non-government sector and a shift in values towards individual self-interests and away from a social identity. That is a much larger and interesting area to go into, but I cannot afford to do so here.
Furthermore, the increasing mobility of families and the longer working hours taken on by both parents have led some families to make many different choices when it comes to sending their kids to schools. Mr Barr mentioned before the people who drive past their neighbourhood school to go somewhere else. Often, that is to do with the work journey. Schools are being asked to compensate for the time many parents no longer are able to put into their children due to their long hours of working, especially highly motivated parents with demanding jobs. Different choices are being made.
At the same time, the social and educational demands on schools have increased and the lives of young people themselves are more fragmented, busy and, in many cases, more stressful. We have probably all seen Richard Eckersley’s research into children and young people today and their levels of stress, their fears, their sadness and their depression. Schools are one way that we can at least make sure they are not finding themselves in that situation. People now expect schools, public or non-public, to ensure that their children learn to manage their behaviour and the many things they need in the world and that the schools keep them fit. This places huge demands on teachers and school managers and is a reason why we need to look at educating for the different needs of the 21st century.
It is reasonable to look for some strategic change for public education and to expect that we would like to make it cheaper rather than more expensive and that it can be attractive to a broad proportion of our population. We do not want our education system to become a residualised system for those students whose parents cannot afford to send them to more expensive, more socially exclusive schools.
In Canberra, the primary schools, the preschools and the secondary colleges have all been seen as strengths but, in the context of our changing society, it is being suggested by independent educationalists, the P&C council, the Australian Education Union, among many informed voices over the past several years, that more innovation and creativity need to be put into high school education. Given that, a plan to close or radically alter a large number of primary schools, to abolish 20 preschools and to play around with the edges of the college system has nothing to do with addressing those key concerns. It is little wonder that so many people simply do not understand what the government is up to. Nor, on the information given to us and to the community, can the argument that this restructuring is driven by the desire to improve educational outcomes be sustained.
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