Page 3609 - Week 08 - Friday, 24 August 2012
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This minister regularly highlights literacy and numeracy levels but fails to point out the significant percentage of students who are falling below minimum literacy and numeracy levels. He showcases school buildings like the Gungahlin college and Namadgi but is less enthusiastic about explaining why Taylor primary school needs to be rebuilt, why Dickson College’s asbestos remediation plans came to a halt when money ran out or the need for Curtin primary school parents to raise funds for basic building repairs and canteen upgrades, which have been promised twice and never delivered. Where is the consultation with parents at schools like Duffy and Weston Creek preschool?
Of course, while the minister made much of funding for students with a disability in non-government schools, he did not provide much detail and left it to others to do the maths and inquire as to the value and sincerity of the offer. They offered $2 million, but only for one year. The $2 million is to be spread across 559 students. So what happens next year? “Wait and see,” said the minister. How and why a $2 million grant came about is a mystery to everyone—the recipients and this minister, as he cannot explain the logic behind it. It appears the $2 million from the interest subsidy scheme was just sitting there and they decided to do something with it. What useful contribution could it make, apart from having an immediate impact for 559 students for one year so that any programs that would need to be put in place cannot be funded because it runs out at the end of the year?
The minister said that the principal factor in play in this funding arrangement was the introduction of commonwealth government initiatives, in other words, Gonski review committee reforms. We questioned at the time how much the minister understood about Gonski, and after this week we know he does not know much at all. For a start, minister, any changes, if they can be agreed and funded by then, will not come into play until 2014, at the earliest. This one-off funding for students with a disability in non-government schools runs out in June 2013, minister. So there is the next year that is totally unfunded. But already any resolution on Gonski seems further away than ever.
On the Gonski review, when the minister went to the press about the statements we and the federal Liberals were making in questioning the Gonski review, the minister questioned the figures that we presented, the figures that were presented to every education directorate in the country. The unions have it. People have had it for two months. Everyone has speculated on the impact it would have on not just non-government schools, minister, but the whole education sector and especially here in the ACT where, because of our unique demographic situation, we are much harder hit than anyone else.
Who is the only one who has not spoken up about it? It is the minister. He said, “I will not sign anything that is not going to do the trick for us at all,” without understanding, having had two months to examine these figures, without taking up the cudgel, if I can use that quaint expression that Ms Burch is very familiar with, without having the fortitude or the foresight to actually come out and defend what was wrong for the ACT within the Gonski review. Minister, you failed that test miserably. Instead, all you could say was that we were using false figures.
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