Page 3127 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 16 September 2015
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We do not know how many public servants were complicit, nor do we know why they were not part of the apparently independent—meaning outside the education directorate—inquiry. This issue has generated unwanted publicity for Canberra in media around Australia and overseas for months. That is not the fault of the school at the heart of all this; it is not the fault of the media. It has remained a story because so many questions, reasonably asked, have remained unanswered.
I genuinely regret that this whole issue has been so badly managed from the start. Even Minister Burch has admitted that the management of it has sold Canberra families short. So what went wrong and why after nearly six months do so many questions remain? The first question is: when did it all start? The answer is: we do not really know. According to the directorate-published time line, the relevant date starts on Tuesday, 10 March when apparently a structure was constructed. But what came before that? What precipitated its construction? What pushed the principal into a decision that became the solution?
We know from a less than satisfactory FOI inquiry that a quote was sought on 24 February and an invoice generated on 11 March. Neither of those dates, fairly significant entries in the history of this, appeared in the recorded time line published to explain this issue. Why not? And what events precipitated that decision? What we do know is that the ETD has a number of qualified and very capable specialists—network student engagement teams or NSET—trained in managing the complex needs and challenging behaviours of our students. In all likelihood there are not enough of them, but I will pass no judgement on numbers, lack of numbers or lack of training. But why did the school in question, the teacher in question, the principal in question, the network leader in question, not request their support? The child did not become magically unmanageable overnight, so why were the warning signals not noticed? And where was NSET while this was escalating?
We asked questions of the minister on this. The only answer the minister gave was that the principal acted alone. That does not address what we asked. We still have no reasonable explanation as to where the NSET members were. They presumably visit the school on a somewhat regular basis, but apparently they did not see the cage and would appear to not think to ask questions about what surely must have been an exceptionally difficult student. We are asked to believe that this child was not the subject of any conversation between the principal and the directorate staff for some period of time.
The minister has said the principal did not seek advice or support. But that does not excuse the lack of proactivity on the part of the trained NSET staff. Do they only intervene in a school when asked to do so? And why did the principal not reach out for help? Was it because the principal had previously raised the issue and the answers were not especially helpful, or no-one took the issue seriously? We do not know.
The next issue is the existence of the cage for 17 days. We now know that the cage was two-metre by two-metre blue pool fence structure with a self-locking door, adjacent to the classroom. From published photos it would appear to have been located adjacent to the classroom, in a room used to store musical instruments, and
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