Page 2233 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 August 2016
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Reading over submissions to the Assembly’s education, training and youth affairs inquiry in 2009 into school closures, there were complaints about the public being misled about the government’s intentions. Not surprisingly, there was no mention of school closures in the 2004 ALP election platform—a bit similar to the supposed mandate for light rail. Apparently it was only a couple of months after the 2004 ACT elections that plans to close Ginninderra High School were being made—plans to close that school and others—while statements in the press were suggesting “no active consideration of school closures at the moment” and “not on the government’s agenda”. Does this not also sound like the denials over closure of the Manuka childcare centre?
Due process not being followed was another issue. The Education Act 2004 requires that, before closing or amalgamating a school, the minister must have regard to the educational, financial and social impact on students at the school, the students’ families and the general school community. The Save Our Schools organisation showed the government’s insincerity and breach of this section of the act through FOI requests that showed no work had been done to analyse any impact that school closures might have. Compare that also to the lack of disclosure, the lack of information that the parents at Telopea school got about the reasons for their oval being taken from them.
Another topic was false representations of research done to justify the closures. Minister Barr has real form in this area. At the time of the school closures he misused research by Professor Caldwell, suggesting Caldwell’s research proved that small schools were unviable, when in fact the research showed exactly the opposite. He had a similar confusion about research into the value or otherwise of small class sizes. He made dodgy claims about small class sizes and then conveniently dropped them, probably just about the time many schools had classes well in excess of the supposed ideal.
The education efficiency dividend, supposedly based on sound economic research, was another poorly researched blunder that had the potential to damage our schools. Education minister Barr was forced to withdraw this ridiculous and damaging decision, but only after it was pointed out by angry parents that the cut would slash services to the visually impaired and services to the hearing impaired; that it would cut the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literacy and numeracy program and take out several school counsellors.
Since then there have been three education ministers and all have blundered their way through the portfolio. Education minister Bourke’s short tenure was highlighted by building issues due to the absence of appropriate maintenance plans, especially in our older schools. When you have a school in a suburb like Forrest with filthy and smelly toilets and unusable wash basins, other schools like Weetangera with almost permanently leaking roofs and Farrer Primary School with mould that made children sick, that had been ongoing since Minister Barr’s days, that ought to send warning signals.
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