Page 2872 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 5 August 2008
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to improve student results in our education system. We know that lowering class sizes in the early years has been an effective instrument, but there are more important and more pressing issues in our education system, beyond just years 4 to 6. I refer to quality teaching, the provision of better facilities and the provision of a rigorous curriculum.
We are pursuing our education policies in this area based on research and on financial sustainability. As Mr Seselja indicated, the structural impact of his proposal for class size reduction, when fully implemented, is $13 million a year. So whilst he is indicating that we would see very little in the first three years of his proposal, and so we would be waiting until 2012 before we see his proposal fully implemented, we would see a structural impact on the ACT budget in the order of $13 million, just for that initiative.
The question that remains is where Mr Seselja plans to source these teachers from and how much he intends to pay them, given the difficulties that we and all jurisdictions are experiencing in relation to recruiting and retaining teachers—most particularly, teachers in a number of specialist areas. That is why the government believes that the number one priority should be around pursuing quality teaching and rewarding quality teaching. That is why we are engaged with all other states and territories in the commonwealth in a major research project around ways to reward quality teaching. That is why that important area of public policy will be the subject of a national partnership agreement between the commonwealth, the states and territories.
On the ground, within the ACT public education system, there is a commitment by this government to work with the commonwealth to achieve an outcome whereby our best classroom teachers receive six-figure salaries and receive the appropriate rewards for their professionalism. Our goal is to continue to raise the status of the teaching profession, and to provide the capacity for experienced classroom teachers, quality teachers, to remain in the classroom. That is important, given that the current structure in the teaching profession sees the best and brightest and those who want to assume leadership roles in the school environment heading more down an administrative path.
We need to rethink the way that we deliver schooling in the territory. We have undertaken a significant renewal of the public education system. More than $350 million has been invested in public education around renewing facilities, in creating teaching and learning spaces that are attractive for quality teachers to teach in and in providing the sorts of facilities, most particularly in information and communication technology, that will ensure that students and teachers within the ACT public education system are accessing state-of-the-art technology using the latest in teaching techniques and ensuring that this sort of technology is available for all students, no matter which school they attend in the ACT.
That has required some difficult decisions to be taken by government, but we are seeing the benefits of that investment and we are seeing our very strong desire to raise the quality of our education system. In the most recent budget we funded a range of initiatives in order to implement the quality teaching model within the ACT education system. We have out for discussion at the moment the School Standards Authority discussion paper that is aimed at raising standards both in the public and in the private education system in the territory. We recognise that we need a system-wide response.
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