Page 2279 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 16 August 2006
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The 2006-07 budget makes a substantial investment to support these reforms. As I have indicated, there is more than $90 million in capital injections to improve infrastructure, increase confidence in government schools and make them a more attractive choice for parents and students.
The provision of information technology and communication services across the school system is a continuing priority for our education system. The government has provided a further $20 million over the next four years for the smart schools-smart students program, which will ensure that all ACT government schools remain at the forefront of new technology. Unlike the opposition, whose track record on school closures is not good, the Stanhope government does not believe in closing schools and then walking away and leaving the community to suffer without any additional investment.
ACT government schools are the best in Australia. Our results speak for themselves, whether in literacy and numeracy or all the benchmarks in international results in science and mathematics. But leading the country takes real investment, strong commitment and constant innovation.
Our students deserve the best opportunities, the broadest choices and the best facilities. These goals are at the heart of the Towards 2020 proposal. Under the Education Act—legislation passed by this Assembly—before closing or amalgamating a government school the minister must have regard to the educational, financial and social impacts on students at the school, the students’ families and the general school community.
That is exactly what the government is doing in our comprehensive and ongoing consultation process. In fact, to strengthen the consultation provisions in the act, in June of this year we made amendments to the act outlining the principles of the consultation process.
This process must involve a focus on access to and provision of quality education opportunities; be open and transparent; lead to sustainable decisions by ensuring effective community engagement; provide timely information in an accessible way to enable maximum community participation; provide opportunities for feedback about the proposal, especially from families and other people with a significant interest in the proposal; and seek the views of school boards that are likely to be affected by the proposal. The government is engaging with the community on this basis.
As would be expected in the early phase of consultation, the community has raised a number of questions and we are responding to those requests. We are consistently and constantly placing answers to frequently asked questions on the website, at public meetings and in this place. Before the estimates committee I detailed the consultation process the government is undertaking.
We have had eight well-attended community forums across Canberra, each of which was an opportunity for the community to listen to details of the proposal for their specific region and have questions answered, either immediately or at one of the many follow-up meetings with individual schools that either I or my departmental officials have attended. There has been a large volume of correspondence, either in hard copy or by email, and
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