Page 2306 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 23 June 2010
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MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ms Le Couteur): In which case, we now go to the question that Mr Barr’s amendment be agreed to. Do you wish to speak more on this?
MR BARR: Yes. This amendment seeks to insert student literacy and numeracy outcomes and other educational outcomes into the list of educational factors that should be considered. Clearly, this data will be publicly available on the My School website. It is appropriate, therefore, that it be available and considered by an independent committee, as members of the community will be considering it, in relation to any proposed closure or amalgamation of a school. Given the information is publicly available it seems silly to exclude it from the list that an independent committee would assess. I think common sense dictates that it must be included in this list. I seek the support of the Assembly for that to occur.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (4.50): We will be supporting Mr Barr’s amendment. The original list talked about educational impacts and there were spots, particularly No 9, around student outcomes and also, at the end of the list, any other information that needed to be included. We certainly have no objection to Mr Barr’s amendment. I guess it puts something in in a more explicit way and adds another thing to the list that must be considered when there is a proposal to close or amalgamate a school. We will be supporting this amendment.
Amendment agreed to.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Planning, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation and Minister for Gaming and Racing) (4.51): I move amendment No 2, circulated in my name, to Ms Hunter’s proposed amendment [see schedule 2 at page 2370].
Again, to be brief, this amendment proposes to omit one of the subsets under the economic impacts set of criteria on page 5 of Ms Hunter’s amendment. This relates particularly to a requirement to assess financial impact on local business, including ongoing liability. The government’s view is that this sits rather oddly with the other economic impacts which relate more directly to the costs and savings et cetera of operating a school, the impacts on parents and the cost per student analysis. It is a somewhat strange location for such an assessment requirement to be in the legislation.
As a matter of principle, I do not believe that you should be determining education policy and the provision of education services based on local business impacts. I think that is an externality that needs to sit aside from your policymaking and decisions in relation to the location of schools. I cannot think of many other public assets in the public service provision where you would be making decisions about service provision and what is the appropriate service provision based on local business viability. I am not suggesting that there are not externalities in relation to the location of a school.
I would pretty much call this the lolly shop amendment. We should not be making our decisions on the provision of schools and schooling services based on how the corner
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