Page 3077 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 17 October 2007
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upgraded, even though most of us acknowledge that students reach a certain kind of maturity earlier these days. Certainly in high schools year 10 can be a very difficult year to teach.
I am very interested to see the business plan. I do feel, of course, rightly, that I am unable to respond in full to that, and it probably would have been quite good if the motion had been updated to reflect the fact that the business plan had been produced. In terms of Mrs Dunne’s amendment, I think that pretty much everything that she says in the first part is an accurate reflection of what has occurred. I think that it is important that we implement the recommendations of the review and that we reinstate the 21 staff cut from the ACT college system, because the value of the college system was based on the time that teachers could spend with students. I am being told that finding that extra hour or so that is required actually means that teachers have got less time to speak to students. Their workload in every other regard has not decreased; it is mandatory. The discretionary part is the time the teachers spend just talking to students between classes and after classes. The nature of college systems is that students are not there all the time and able to do that. (Time expired.)
MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Planning, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, Minister for Industrial Relations) (5.15): I indicate from the outset that the government will not be supporting Mrs Dunne’s amendment, mainly because it contains a large number of factual errors. Most notable is the reference in paragraph 1 (c)—the failure of the government to implement the recommendations.
I would like to present—and I will table it at the conclusion of my speech—the ACT college business plan, but for those who are watching in their offices, if they go to the department website, www.det.act.gov.au, they will find it there on the front page, where it has been for the last month. I released the ACT college business plan 2007-09 more than a month ago. Just to provide some background on that, the government did commission the review from Atelier Learning Solutions late in 2005, and the report was presented to the government at the start of 2006 and made 14 recommendations.
This report was then referred to a representative group of stakeholders, including university academics, educational practitioners and administrators, the Australian Education Union, the Canberra Institute of Technology and parent groups, for comment. This representative group supported all but two of the 14 recommendations. I then accepted the advice of the representative group and referred the other 12 recommendations to the Department of Education and Training to develop a plan of action in collaboration with the college principals.
That work commenced in the second quarter of 2006, just after I became minister. It commenced then and continued throughout 2006. During this time, departmental officers and college principals met regularly to discuss the ACT college business plan. The plan that I released last month represents the outcomes of those discussions. It identifies the connection between the ACT Department of Education and Training and the strategic plan for DET 2006-09 and the recommendations from the review, and it incorporates targets, strategies and performance measures for achieving those things required by the review.
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