Page 523 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 23 February 2010
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students manage the reintegration and the fact that there is already a mechanism in place if a student has to be suspended for longer than five days.
As I said, we support the introduction of the suspension support pilot as a means of trying to address the issues confronting the students, parents or guardians and the schools during a suspension. This is a major shift in approach and how effective it will be in getting all parties to become involved will only be assessed over time. To link it with another major shift by extending suspension times when, as I said, there is already a mechanism in place if this is necessary is really not good enough—just because it is an election commitment.
In the coming 12 months, the pilot will not solve all the problems with suspensions. It is confined to the north side and our advice from the department is it will only cover about 25 per cent of students suspended. We know any new system has to be trialled and start somewhere, but potentially we will have 75 per cent of students suspended without the level of support offered by the pilot. If this amendment is passed, they could be away from school a lot longer. We see it as vital therefore that, while this pilot progresses, any positive outcomes or learnings are shared with those schools and colleges who are not part of the pilot. If we are going to improve our education system and have better processes around handling these issues, we need to work across all schools in the coming 12 months and not wait until the evaluation is completed.
In debating this issue last time I used an opinion piece from Professor Alison Elliott, research director of early childhood education at the Australian Council for Educational Research, where she said, among other things, that suspended students are the least likely to have the personal or family capacity to help themselves out of their difficulties. They need school and adult support. Even with the suspension support team pilot, in the ACT we are leaving possibly 75 per cent of our suspended students in this situation.
There is another issue that needs to be considered, and that is, the number of suspensions being handed out by schools in the ACT. Statistics on suspensions do not support the perception that our schools lack discipline or are unsafe environments. In answer to a question on notice in December last year, Mr Barr advised that in the primary school sector in 2009 the average duration of suspension was 1.63 days, in the high school sector it was 1.76 days and it was the same in the college sector—hardly a need for a 10 or, as we will see today, 15-day suspension or, as Mr Doszpot was arguing up until today, a 20-day suspension.
Mr Barr also advised that suspensions in the primary school sector represented 1.03 per cent of the student population, 4.69 per cent of the high school sector and 1.26 of the college sector—hardly big numbers when spread across our school system, hardly warranting lengthy suspensions which in most cases will only further isolate those students and make re-engagement with school more difficult.
In addition, in a briefing from the Department of Education and Training on this issue—and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr Barr and his officials for that briefing—we were advised that in the past 12 months only five applications for suspensions beyond five days had been submitted and two of these were rejected.
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