Page 532 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 23 February 2010
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student as the whole human being and not just the educational delivery. I do acknowledge that those programs are in place. We do have student services teams and welfare teams, counsellors and a range of programs. But, in most cases, they are generalist services. They are very worthwhile services, and I think they do a great job.
But what we will have with this student suspension team pilot are some professionals. We will have a social worker; we will have a psychologist and an educational consultant. We will have a multidisciplinary team that can go in and really support and work with the students to tackle the issues to get to the bottom of the problems and really try and sort them through so that it does not become a larger problem, so that these students do not revolve in and out of school on suspensions or have the unfortunate result where they actually disengage from school. If that happens, a number of life opportunities are limited and there can be all sorts of other issues involved, such as ending up in contact with, say, the juvenile justice system.
I also note that he talked about complaints mechanisms and so forth and that there was still an opportunity for the family of a suspended student to be able to, for instance, complain to the Department of Education and Training. I would hope that, as it is clear that these changes will go through today, that it is clearly spelt out to families of students in the Catholic school system and in the public school system that these mechanisms are available and how they might be able to pursue them. That does ensure that, if there are any concerning situations, they can be taken up and dealt with properly.
It is about ensuring that there is natural justice. I believe that that external review and mechanism from someone—the department of education—is an opportunity to run an eye over a decision made. As I said earlier, there have been five applications for students to be suspended for more than five days in the last 12 months, and two of those were not supported by the department of education. It shows that it is an important oversight mechanism.
I also want to make it very, very clear, as I did in my speech and have in public comments, that this is not about in any way saying that we do not trust principals to make good decisions. Mr Seselja spent some time on this. I made it very, very clear that we believe that we have some great principals out there who do a tremendous job under some difficult circumstances, sometimes with constraints on funding and so forth. But this is really about ensuring that there is some sort of oversight mechanism when we are talking about children.
I also made it very clear in my speech earlier that we do need to look after the health and wellbeing of all students at schools, of teachers and of other staff in schools. This is also not about neglecting that side of the issue as well. My belief is that, if you can get in to work with students who have been suspended, work with students who are displaying problematic or antisocial behaviour and provide those supports, then that is going to have a beneficial outcome for everybody who is part of that school community.
I was very alarmed when Mr Doszpot decided that this is all based on trying to have some sort of equity with independent schools. That is really hardly an argument. As I said earlier, he talks about New South Wales having 20 days, so we should have it
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