Page 1700 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 June 2014
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This budget invests over $960 million in our education system, an increase of six per cent on last year’s budget. We have maintained and will continue to maintain our commitment to the national education reform agreement. We will increase the funding for our schools and have allocated capital funding of over $82 million to our schools’ physical infrastructure and ICT. This will include works to upgrade classrooms at Curtin Primary School and the school frontage and administration area of the Gilmore Primary School.
We have allocated $47 million for the new primary school in Coombs to ensure that our public system grows with our population. The new school in Coombs will be ready for enrolments in 2016 and will accommodate 720 students from preschool up to year 6. I look forward to being able to announce in the not so distant future the successful tender for the construction of that school.
We will begin our modernisation of Belconnen High School to ensure that all students have access to 21st century learning environments. This is in stark contrast to the recent federal budget that saw $80 billion ripped out of education and health across the country. I would ask those opposite, in their recent conversations with the independent schools and the Catholic schools here in the ACT, to tell us what their thoughts are on the federal budget that has seen cuts in the outyears.
The increase that was promised under a Labor government and that we were committed to will not be realised for the independents and Catholics. In recent conversations with them, that is resulting in a $7 million and a $17 million cut in funding to the independent and Catholic schools in the ACT. That is not my calculation. That is the calculation that they have offered to me.
This is also a budget that recognises the important part CIT plays in our community. Through this budget we will begin a campus modernisation plan to ensure that CIT has facilities to meet the needs not only of the students of today but also of tomorrow. We will begin work on the planning and construction of the new CIT campus in Tuggeranong to serve the thousands of people in the Tuggeranong Valley who look to CIT to learn a skill or a trade. We will also make sure that it has links to the recently opened trades training centre operating across the Tuggeranong High School and college.
Madam Speaker, this budget also continues our strong commitment to ensuring that Canberrans have access to affordable and quality child care. We will invest a further $1.4 million into upgrading childcare centres in Chisholm and Kambah, to expand the number of places and to provide further amenity to staff, parents and children in those centres.
These upgrades at Bunyara and Salem childcare centres will ensure their continued compliance with the national quality framework. It is very pleasing to note that under this government we have effectively seen a doubling in childcare places across the ACT, with significant investment in maintenance, upgrades and new facilities but also in the workforce, which is so important in the early education sector. With that, we will extend the early childhood scholarship program with an investment of a further
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