Page 4674 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 20 October 2010

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(b) Minister for Education and Training to recommence the consultation process and to include school community stakeholders;

(d) ACT Government to explore options on how to enhance future funding support to student and teacher support services and report back to the Assembly by the last sitting day in 2010.

Before I begin, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the members of the community who have shown up today to see their elected members debate this very important motion. It has been a tenuous and emotional several weeks for many of them, and we should commend them for their bravery in taking up their civic duties for the greater good of our school system. We thank you for your interest and your enthusiasm.

The philosopher Nietzsche once said: “Education is not meant to determine who the child should be but, rather, how children might fully become themselves.” Just as much as Australia is a country where you can be what you want to be and not just what you are born into, Nietzsche’s view on the empowering qualities of education has resonance. Teaching is, after all, the profession that teaches all other professions.

It is easy to talk about the historical context, the broader picture or, in this case, the money that has been invested into our education system, and now the money that needs to be taken out. Yet the only true context in our children’s education is that they can be what they aspire to be and that parents have the necessary support mechanisms to help their children reach those aspirations.

The government’s recent proposed efficiency dividend cuts—and, I would assume, with the minister’s consent—fly in the face of this empowering role that education plays in our children’s lives. A brief cross-slice of the initial proposed cuts is telling: two early intervention preschool support teachers; two support teachers for early childhood English as a second language program; one early childhood support teacher for behavioural management; four school counsellor positions of vacancies not filled; reclassification of student management consultants, and eight remaining positions to be relocated to schools; two hearing support positions from a headcount of 10.3 full-time equivalent teacher positions; one of four vision support teachers; post-school options teacher positions to be discontinued; two disability support officers discontinued; five classroom teacher positions and one SLC position in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literacy and numeracy program discontinued; one SLC English as a second language position. The list continues.

Added to this is the closure/break-up of the CTL resource centre, which members of the entire school system, both public and private, and parents of home-school children have said should be kept centralised. There has been a reprieve for students requiring hearing and vision support services and some guarantee that the government will hire two of the four counsellor positions it had originally intended to discontinue. But this is piecemeal in light of the totality of the proposed cuts.

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