Page 4312 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 13 October 2009
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Many of the students that are suspended for an extended period of time could be suspended because the student, according to the Education Act:
(ii) threatens to be violent or is violent to another student attending the school, a member of the staff of the school or anyone else involved in the school’s operation; or
(iii) acts in a way that otherwise threatens the good order of the school or the safety or wellbeing of another student …
The minister makes this token reference to the so-called “zero tolerance” to bullying adopted by this government in the explanatory statement accompanying his bill:
This provision allows principals wider discretion in dealing with incidents in public schools. It will enhance their capacity to appropriately manage anti-social behaviour in their schools and to apply proportionate sanctions, reiterating the Territory’s zero-tolerance approach to bullying and its focus on schools as safe places for all.
Mr Speaker, I can tell you right here that there are many families and students who would beg to differ that zero tolerance is actually the case in ACT schools currently. And to claim that this amendment impacts on the problem in a significant way is, quite frankly, laughable. The Education Amendment Bill 2009 takes us nowhere near where we need to be when it comes to being a zero-tolerance jurisdiction.
I have written to the minister on numerous occasions since my election to this place, on behalf of concerned constituents, and recounted some very distressing incidences of systemic overt and covert bullying. I can quite honestly say that I am appalled that the minister has now resorted to replying to this steady stream of representations in a very repetitive, unhelpful way, by referring the families to the DET website, despite this being the first place that these families and victims have often been to already, and sadly to no avail.
It must be said that the constituents that come to me are by now at their wits’ end. They often have children that have completely withdrawn from a learning environment due to the bullying they have endured. These students—and I have heard from families with children as young as six and as old as 17—are also at risk of withdrawing from society altogether. These experiences, and the inability of the system to support them, can impact on their lives and on the lives of their families so severely that they never quite recover.
The bottom line is that, despite the minister’s spin, bullying is alive and well and thriving in ACT schools. No increases in suspension time or punitive measures will put a stop to it without further understanding and the acknowledgement of the extent of the problem as it exists here in ACT schools.
The first port of call for this issue, one would hope, would be to ascertain the exact extent of the problem. DEEWR recently conducted a study into the extent of bullying across Australia titled The covert bullying prevalence study. However, only three schools in the ACT participated and not one of them was a government school. All three that did participate were Catholic primary schools. I repeat: only three schools in
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