Page 823 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 2 April 2008
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It will come as no surprise that the government will not be supporting the Leader of the Opposition’s motion today. Shortly I will circulate an amendment to the motion. But I think it is worth going back to the fundamental tenets of the government’s policy around school renewal: that there were a range of factors that were confronting the ACT education system, most particularly a decline in the school age population in the ACT.
Since 2005 we have witnessed a 45 per cent increase in the number of people over 65 in the ACT and an eight per cent decrease in the school age population. That plays out in different degrees around the city. In the Gungahlin area there is very strong growth, hence the need for the government to invest in new public education infrastructure in Gungahlin. We recently opened a new school at Harrison, and the Gungahlin Secondary College is scheduled for opening in 2010. So there is a need to invest in new education infrastructure where there is clear demand. But other parts of the city are undergoing a significant demographic change that required a response from government.
Secondly, and a fact that Mr Seselja has talked about extensively during his contribution, is a drift away from public education. If you look at the long-run history of the drift from the public system to the private system going back over 30 years you notice that that drift accelerates when the Liberals are in power federally. When there is a federal Labor government the drift begins to slow and then eventually there is a move back to the public system.
It would be fair to indicate that over a 30-year period the level of commonwealth government investment in public education has been a significant driver of enrolments. But that is not to say that the state and territory governments do not also have significant policy responsibility. This government has increased its investment in public education by more than 30 per cent since coming to office. That is a real and significant increase in funding––
Mr Seselja: What is that in real terms?
MR BARR: Well, a significant increase, Mr Seselja. You go back and look at inflation year on year. Even you and your colleagues would have to accept that there has been a real increase in funding to ACT public schools over that period. It is important to note that that investment has been targeted in a range of key areas, most particularly, in the second appropriation last year, to provide a $14.6 million package to improve pastoral care and student welfare in our public high schools. There was $3.3 million targeted at Indigenous education.
These are important areas of investment. They are only made possible by the difficult decisions the government took in 2006. This is the fundamental issue that we are dealing with. Is it quantity or quality in education that we are looking for? When you look across our system we have 44 non-government schools that are educating just over 40 per cent of the student population. The remaining 60 per cent are being educated across just short of 90 public schools.
Prior to the changes, we were spreading our resources thinly across such a large number of schools, schools that could not offer viable education programs because
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