Page 1982 - Week 05 - Thursday, 3 May 2012
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Here in Canberra we have some outstanding non-government schools that lead Australia in educational outcomes and in technology uptake, and offer a wide variety of curriculum choice and co-curricular activities, be it sport or drama. The fact remains that parents want choice, and Canberra schools provide that choice in quality abundance in government, non-government, church and independent schools, and they all deserve our support.
Interestingly, a feature in today’s Canberra Times said:
The ACT public school system has a tradition of excellence and achievement.
ACT public schools provide students with innovative learning environments, quality teaching and stimulating programs with a range of learning opportunities and experiences to ensure students gain the skills they need to lead fulfilling, productive and responsible lives.
Those remarks could and should be said equally of all ACT schools, because I have seen innovative learning environments in little independent schools like Blue Gum, just as I have seen it at Dickson college. I have met quality teachers who are passionate about their vocation in every single school I have visited.
The same article boasted proudly that the ACT invests well above the national average in public education. And we know it does. But time and time again we see this Labor government focused only on public education. We see a minister who looks at increased public school enrolments as some sort of victory over “the other lot”.
It was strange that in yesterday’s motion celebrating Catholic Schools Week the fact that ACT government funding is 12 per cent higher for government schools than the national average while ACT funding for non-government schools is among the nation’s lowest, was not something that this minister or indeed anyone on the other side of the chamber was keen to highlight, explain or even admit.
While Ms Hunter was waxing lyrical about the equity in education that we require, in fact, it was the Greens combining with their coalition partners, this government, who deleted these references I have just made that are actual factual statements. But that was too hurtful from their point of view and they wanted that deleted from the motion that I introduced yesterday. I ask you: where is the equity there? You do not even want to know, you do not even want to have it seen in black and white in this Assembly what we are really talking about here. We are talking about equality, we are talking about choice. That is there in your lexicon only if it is choices that you want represented.
That above national average investment is well demonstrated in such state-of-the-art schools as the Gungahlin college. It would stand in strong competition with any school in Australia for design, for technology, for innovation in so many areas. As the principal, Gai Beecher, told me when we met, and says in her page on their state-of-the-art website:
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