Page 2792 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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more orderly, collaborative, inventive, un-panicked and, in the end, more effective manner. There have been many debates on education in this place since this shocking proposal was launched on the Canberra community and it is hard to keep track of what has been said.
I am going to use this debate to identify some of the possibilities that have been overlooked, and some of the problems that by its nature this process has created. From all appearances, there has been no social impact analysis of this Towards 2020 plan. It particularly impacts on local primary schools and preschools which play a strong and well-identified role in social inclusion, particularly for people who are socially or economically disadvantaged and marginalised. It is also extremely significant that the very scale of the schools under threat, because most of them are small, often assists them to provide support for kids with special needs and those at risk of unsatisfactory educational outcomes.
The more you move around these school communities the more you learn through stories of the work they do. Some schools do have capacity to look after and maintain and an interest in, in particular, kids and families. And that is not just the teachers; it is other kids and other families as well. In many cases these schools make a flow-on contribution to the economic and social viability of the community more broadly. The Macarthur preschool really is the only community facility there at the moment. The Hall and Tharwa schools really are essential to the continued viability of their villages. There are stories about each school in this 2020 plan. Unfortunately, the Towards 2020 plan appears to have been developed by a team outside the education department in order to deal in one step with the long-term structural problems that it is believed it has and to meet the targets of the functional review. And that has been done without working with other departments and agencies.
I do not think anybody would have been very happy about being put on the team inside the education department to carry out the orders of the functional review, which the government has so uncritically accepted without the scrutiny analysis that it should have used on such a far-reaching plan. I guess that is a reflection of the functional review process as best as it can be divined, which has been that the different agencies have had to deliver on recommendations without the opportunity to work out the best approach across agencies. In other words, it was big, it was a rush, it was a secret, and some of the costs and consequences have not even yet begun to be considered.
The government’s plans for the buildings that will be empty if and when these schools are closed are worth considering, if there are plans. According to the education minister there are no plans for these buildings. That is probably because the functional review did not require the education department to do anything other than hand those buildings back. It probably has a different task for the Department of Territory and Municipal Services, which would be to make money out of the operation of all buildings or sell them. Perhaps Minister Hargreaves has not got that far into his instructions yet, although, judging from a reply to a question I put in the estimates process, he knows it is likely. And the Chief Minister has effectively offered the sites to any developer interested in adaptable housing.
Anyway, one vision for some of those facilities that the government has no plans for would be to transform them into centres of lifelong learning. If the number of young
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