Page 4186 - Week 13 - Thursday, 14 December 2006
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agreed that P-2 would be the best model, so we accepted the advice of the Canberra Preschool Society and the primary principals association.
We have accepted that advice and we have gone ahead with the P-2 model in five locations around the city. One of them is already in operation, and it is an incredibly successful school that has a waiting list. I am sure if those opposite bothered to visit that school and see how successful the programs are, they might be more supportive of an early childhood education focus and realise that having some dedicated early childhood schools spread throughout the city is a good thing for choice and diversity within our system.
There are a variety of other areas where, as part of the consultation process, we sought to respond to what the community was saying. A clear example is 7-12 schooling within the north Canberra region. There was also a very strong desire from the community through the consultation process that we seek to engage more cluster arrangements around the city so that we can have groups of schools working together. Yes, we intend to continue to expand upon that program. It is a program that works incredibly successfully in the Lanyon Valley and has, in fact, been applauded by Professor Brian Caldwell, amongst others, as best practice in Australia and the world. So, yes, we intend to strengthen those cluster arrangements, and there is very strong support within school communities for that to happen.
It is interesting that over the course of the debate, Dunne engaged in what can only be described a series of back-flips. At one point earlier on she did acknowledge that some schools have to close. Then we went through the process where we were going to have to fund to reopen them all. Then, yesterday, on Ross Solly’s program, she was asked, “Do all the schools on the list deserve to stay open?” Mrs Dunne replied, “I cannot honestly say that because I, like everyone else in the community, have had a good hard look at a lot of the schools. Some of them are small and do not have much prospect of turning around small enrolments.” That is what Mrs Dunne had to say yesterday.
When pushed on the issue, she acknowledges the serious issues that are confronting public education in this territory. In her motion she says that we have not put forward a rationale for why it is that we need to undertake this change. I do not know how many times I have said it in this chamber, but I will repeat it again for the benefit of those opposite. Demographic change is a key feature of what is happening in our community. Over the last decade we have seen a decline in the school aged population. No-one has disputed that. Not even Trevor Kobold has disputed that. In his submission, he skirts around it and says that we have to look at individual suburbs, but no-one has disputed that across the territory there is a decline in the school aged population.
Equally, no-one is disputing the fact that there has been a drift away from government schools to non-government schools. No-one has objected to the obvious fact that the costs of education continue to rise and that this jurisdiction, one of the smallest jurisdictions in the country spends about 20 per cent more than other jurisdictions on education. Most of the time that is a conscious policy decision and it is one that I endorse. But what we have been doing in this system is subsidising schools because they are small for no other reason than that they are small. It is not because there is an
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