Page 3076 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 17 October 2007
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A quorum not being present and the bells being rung—
DR FOSKEY: The clock keeps ticking, does it? Am I to cease giving my—
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, you are.
DR FOSKEY: Right. We don’t stop the clock, do we? That’s an issue around standing orders.
Mr Barr: She’s just cut off five minutes of your time.
DR FOSKEY: I have attempted to get standing orders changed.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: You may as well relax, Dr Foskey.
DR FOSKEY: I am relaxed. Alert, but relaxed. (Quorum formed.) Thank you, Mrs Dunne. I am not quite sure what your aim was in calling the quorum there, but, of course, all members should be present at all times, and listening eagerly.
In terms of our colleges performing better than others, I think that while our high achieving ACT students do well, I am not sure that they do better than we can expect. We are aware, of course, of the socioeconomic factors that lead to the success of students. But, really, the concern should always be about those students who are not performing well and have not performed well. Their performance is really how we should measure our system, not the performance of those who do exceedingly well, even though, of course, when we are parents, that is what we want.
I do not believe that any school is any better than its teachers and the time that it has for its students. I am concerned about the morale of teachers, especially in colleges after the changes this year. I did ask a question of Mr Barr yesterday; I am awaiting eagerly the data that he has said he will see if he can collect on issues relating to teachers retention. It is fantastic we have so many applicants for our jobs, but I do not think that we can be complacent if we are losing teachers. I think we are always going to need that balance between the new and the experienced teachers.
It is very interesting that the ACT government has paid great respect to this review and that it took its time in replying to it, which I do not necessarily think is a bad thing. But I would really like to have seen a similar exhaustive effort and a report responding to the documents or whatever it was—the evidence—which led to the closure and downgrading—that is my opinion—of 23 public schools in the 2020 process.
There are many, many issues raised by the Atelier review, and many of them, of course, have been self-evident for a while—the issues of transition between high school and college, for instance, and the fact that some students fall through that net simply because of the freedom and the changes that are so different. I think there are issues that could be considered about whether college-type education could start at year 10, given that the college system began in the late 1970s and it has not been
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