Page 5853 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 7 December 2011
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Mr Doszpot: You called him Mr Doszpot. I am simply correcting you to say that that is Mr Hanson. Thank you.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: I take your point, Mr Doszpot. If I have caused you offence, Mr Hanson, by calling you Mr Doszpot, I apologise for that. I have in fact been listening to Ms Hunter and I have noticed that she has not referred to Mr Doszpot directly across the chamber. She has been referring to Mr Doszpot to the chair. I have been conscious of that, I am conscious of that and I will be conscious of it. However, I have asked you, Mr Doszpot, on four occasions—if you want to check the Hansard feel free; on four occasions. I do not like to have to keep asking the question. When it gets to five you go on the list with Mr Hanson on the warnings. That includes you at the moment, Mr Doszpot. Other people will be judged on their behaviour in this chamber. Ms Hunter you have the floor.
MS HUNTER: As I said, my amendment goes to the heart of really ensuring that we review, that we look at what access we are giving to children and young people out there in our classrooms. That is where we need to be focusing our effort. We need to make sure that we do have the right number of teachers out there. We do need to make sure that we improve the level of proficiency that those children and young people are getting in their English language education.
My amendment does go also to the issue of professional development and support for the teachers in those areas. Secondly, it does go into conducting the review, to consult with all relevant community stakeholders as well as ESL classroom teachers and their representatives, which of course we have heard about today. They are the representative groups who, of course, have an important part to play in that discussion.
My amendment asks that there be a report back to the Assembly by April 2012. As I said earlier, there was the inquiry into the educational achievement gap. This is one of the items that was in the Labor-Greens parliamentary agreement. I am pleased that that inquiry was undertaken. It was an important inquiry to look at those students who are not doing so well in our system and how we can ensure that we do the best by them.
Today we have touched on one of those groups, which is those students where English is their second language. Again, I do hope that I have the support of all members for my amendments because, as I said, they go very much to the heart of this matter.
The heart of this matter is that we need to ensure we do the best and provide the best language education or access to language education that we can and to improve the proficiency. The better the proficiency or the higher the rating that those students can achieve, the better they are going to be able to go back into the mainstream schools and get the best out of the wonderful education that is delivered by our hardworking teachers.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (4.47): I am very pleased to contribute to the debate on Mr Doszpot’s motion today and I would like to thank Mr Doszpot for bringing up this motion on this very important issue and for his continued interest in the education
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