Page 2565 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 23 August 2006
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of this proposal. Last month nearly half of the members of the ACT Labor Party, and a majority of the caucus, voted at their conference to delay implementation of this plan.
What the opposition is offering the government today is a sensible way ahead. Indeed, it is actually a way out for the government—a way to stop this madness. You would hope that the government would agree to this inquiry. This inquiry will not be a witch-hunt on Towards 2020. That is not what the inquiry will examine. It will not be an exercise in embarrassing the government. It will be run by a board of experts, in accordance with the act, who will take the community through an extensive examination of current and future needs of education and training in the ACT. The Canberra Liberals’ plan to hold an inquiry offers a way to sit down and actually work out the future for education and training in the ACT. As you can see from the terms of reference, the inquiry would report by the end of March 2008, and that timetable will allow the inquiry to listen to community views and develop plans about the future of ACT education.
Mr Deputy Speaker, the inquiry has very comprehensive terms of reference. Firstly, it will look at the current structure of our school system and its future development. The report of the review of government secondary schools supported the integrity of the current college system, yet the government proposes replacing that system with a year 7 to 12 secondary school in north Canberra for no obvious rationale. The inquiry would look at the costs and the capacity of the system. We need to get accurate data on the costing capacity of our school system, not the slanted data produced by the government to date since its announcement in relation to the 2020 plan. The inquiry would be tasked with examining the social, environmental, educational and economic impacts of change in schooling, and this needs to be taken into account in assessing any proposals.
Maintaining high retention rates is another important element of our proposed inquiry. Our education system has an excellent record on retention rates. The college system plays a key role in keeping the retention rates higher, as shown by the statistics. We need to ensure that we maintain and enhance the strong performance of our school system. The government’s ill-considered changes are a threat to ACT schools maintaining and enhancing their reputation for high quality schools.
The Towards 2020 proposal penalises schools that cater for students with a disability. This inquiry will take the needs of special needs students into account through its terms of reference. Also included in the terms of reference is the issue of skills shortages. This is a key issue for ACT businesses. We are currently facing a shortage of skilled workers in the ACT, and the inquiry will consider this as a key issue that needs to be addressed.
We suggest that this inquiry should get under way within 21 days. We have a chance to step back and ensure that our education and training systems continue to meet our needs well into the next century. It has taken nearly a century to develop the ACT schools system into the best in Australia and one of the best in the world. Unfortunately, it seems that this government, through the Chief Minister and the education minister, want to destroy it in six months. I would hope they just stop and rethink. Indeed, I even recall that one of the main planks of the Labor Party platform during the 1998 election concerned a comprehensive inquiry—I do not believe this was to be under the Inquiries Act, but a comprehensive inquiry at any rate—into the ACT system.
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