Page 832 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 2 April 2008
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income, religion, indigenous status and family type in government and Catholic and other non-governmental schools. The social make-up of schools shows the growing proportion of students from poor families, single-parent families and so on in government schools, particularly secondary schools. This is an important report. In that context, one would hope that, in making decisions about how to invest more resources in education, the ACT government is informed by the kinds of information that report presents.
One would hope that the government will seek more disaggregated data, telling us who is leaving ACT government schools and who is staying. One would hope to see qualitative research telling us why they are going and what they imagine they get when they go. One would imagine that the ACT government is looking harder at all the research regarding the engagement of students who have more difficult and more challenging lives. Nothing the ACT government has done convinces me that these are the priorities it is taking to the next election.
We have here an amendment—which is far longer than the original motion that it seeks to amend—which details the initiatives that are being taken. Many of these are worthy initiatives, but without the basis of work done to show what is needed in our education system we cannot be sure that these are not just bandaids. We need to see why these particular initiatives were chosen over others. And when the government justifies what it is doing with education, we certainly need more—I am very pleased that we got it today—than just the total sum of spending.
The Liberal Party motion projects a specific strategy to deal with the upcoming changes—which is, in essence, Liberal policy. I support most of its ambitions, but I would be arguing here and now for a strategy that would allow us to sort out the mess after the October election, when, with a bit of luck, there will be a minority government.
I would like to move the amendment that is circulated in my name.
MR SPEAKER: Dr Foskey, you cannot move that amendment until we dispose of the amendment moved by Mr Barr.
DR FOSKEY: Thank you. I will speak to the amendment when I move it.
There are many models around. I am very loath to accept a motion that sets up a process when we have not really looked at other models. For instance, I have mentioned the Victorian model a number of times. The department set up councils with stakeholders based on education department regions and told them the problem and the resources that needed to be saved. Those communities, including all the stakeholders, came to a solution where, in the Bendigo district, one school was closed. Everyone was okay about that because they could see the reasons for it.
But you can never undo a bad consultative process. That is the problem that the ACT government is facing now, just before an election. The damage has been done and I am afraid that it will not be fixed easily.
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