Page 2938 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 September 2006
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as has happened here. We would talk to indigenous groups, the P&C council, ACTCOSS and NAPCAN.
Who would we talk to from the students? Is there a student body advisory board? There should be. We do not even have the Commissioner for Children and Young People in place yet, but her or his job would have been to advocate and represent young people and make sure their interests are preserved. We would talk to the Australian Education Union and we would talk to principals. That is not an exhaustive list, but if you do not have those people along with you, then you are in trouble. Then we would set a time line that suits the current school year. We would not announce it in June, which would mean that the six months would end when the school year ends. There has been enough said about that. I do not want to say things I have already said because there are so many new things to say.
We would set up criteria and targets. We have not seen any of those in this process. The schools do not know under what criteria they were chosen. It appears to differ from school to school, but no-one has been able to really establish what it is. We would set up targets. We would set up bottom lines to make sure that certain things are not harmed by any cost reductions that take place. We might end this consultation in March or April next year. That seems to me to be a fairer time than December, and that is what our bill is about.
Then we would do new research. We all know that the statistical stuff was either old or wrong and that lots of communities have come up with newer figures that are more accurate. Yes, it is important to know why enrolments are falling, but it is also important to know if they are rising, and they appear to be. Let us not forget that public education is our safety net. Go and read the World Bank stuff. We are not yet World Bank material here, but when the cost of living rises, a lot more people will need a good public education system.
At the moment there is some discretionary funding that enables a group of people to move out of our system. I do not think this process is increasing their faith in our system, but it is important that we have a good system and realise that there is only a certain number of people who can ever move into the private system and there is only a certain number the private system can take. We cannot rely upon that and we cannot use it as an excuse for doing what this process does.
We should look at different models of organising schools. There is room for small and large schools in our system. People should not have to go to a really large school. People should have choices. Some students do not do well in large schools. Some students do better in small schools where everybody knows them. We should look at where the educational holes and the needs are. Sometimes it looks like there is a big map of Canberra and the minister puts on a blindfold and stands in front of it with a pin and that is the one that goes.
I believe that the focus on why students are being moved into private schools is actually a bit of a furphy. The ACT has a record of, and a responsibility to maintain, a high quality public education system. We need to consider the impact on schools that are not closing. One of the problems with this process is that the schools that are targeted have been left to speak for themselves, but increasingly the schools are going to be impacted
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