Page 533 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 14 March 2007
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Is the minister for education now aware of the wide-ranging evidence that indicates the strong link between these factors? Can he explain why the 2020 plan failed to take that inequity into account?
MR BARR: I thank Dr Foskey for the question and for the opportunity to restate the significant importance of the education reform that was undertaken in 2006. What the government sought to do through this reform process was to more effectively allocate resources within the education portfolio. We were facing a series of significant issues within that portfolio, and they have been debated at length in this Assembly.
It is very important that we are able to allocate resources in areas where there is high educational or socioeconomic need. The government sought to do that through the provision of new infrastructure in those areas. Examples would include the new facilities in west Belconnen, the provision of a $54 million new school in Kambah and the provision of new facilities in Gungahlin.
On top of that we also sought to provide a record amount of capital injection across our education system to look after some of the issues that had been neglected over 17 years of self-government in the territory. What also comes hand in hand with that, though, is a significant investment in IT infrastructure across our schools to ensure that, no matter where you are in Canberra or what your socioeconomic background is, you are able to access high quality information technology through your school.
It has quite often been the case that schools are the great leveller in terms of access to that sort of information technology. For some students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, the only opportunity they will have to access the internet and to have access to the latest information technology is through their school. So the government has sought, through this reform process, to address some of the inequities that were occurring in our education system.
But it is also worth noting that, in addition to capital infrastructure and other investments, there are a series of programs that the government has put in place in relation to support for students from a lower socioeconomic background. There are a variety of measures in place to provide additional funding to particular schools that are in identified socioeconomic areas, as well as provision of individual assistance for students.
In my term as education minister I look forward to being able to develop programs further. I am acutely aware of the need to ensure equity of resources across our system because it is crucial to the reforms. The previous arrangements were delivering resources not on the basis of socioeconomic need, not on the basis of improving educational outcomes, but on a factor really only of the size of a school. There was a huge amount of resources devoted to schools in high socioeconomic areas because they happened to be small. The students in those schools were receiving considerably more per head than students in lower socioeconomic areas.
I do not resile for a second from the fact that we have undertaken a significant reform in order to invest a huge amount, a record amount of money, into public education to address just the issues that Dr Foskey is raising here today. I share her concern about
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