Page 2235 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 August 2016
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before was declining in population and had fewer young families moving in. At least Minister Rattenbury did not go as far as his predecessor in trying to gild the lily, as when Ms Burch claimed 18 months ago, “In each of our four networks school capacity will remain comfortably above projected enrolment growth.”
In March I listed a number of schools that were struggling across Canberra—from Red Hill to Mawson and even in the Gungahlin area—that education minister Barr had claimed was to be a focus after closing schools elsewhere. I also pointed out that perhaps the problem might not have been quite so dire had the government delivered on its 2012 election promise of an additional—and I stress an additional—$70 million for older school upgrades.
I called on the government to provide projections for 2017, 2018 and 2019 and how they are responding to those projections. When Minister Rattenbury agreed to deliver those projections and to provide enrolment details for schools, I wondered why he needed several weeks to do so. Once I got the figures I could see why he needed all that time.
Instead of working on what is regarded as a standard way of measuring class space, someone in the directorate came up with a, supposedly, ministerial face saver called total school capacity. Minister Rattenbury was able to table a new set of data in the Assembly that showed there was no capacity problem in nearly all of our schools. It was suggested that this new way of measuring space in schools was more accurate, rather than relying on the established and tried method of actual classes. Instead, you effectively measure absolutely every space available within the school grounds, including the special learning units, even though they were designed for a minimum number of students, including purpose-built areas such as music rooms, science rooms and the like. This helped to show there was more room than first thought. The Canberra Times saw through this ruse. As their editorial said at the time, “Massaging school figures is not management”. Minister Rattenbury should have been well aware of that because that is all it was—massaging and data manipulation.
However, there was one small problem. The minister’s response that he tabled in the Assembly in June included the February 2016 census data. You could then compare that to this new total capacity number, except the February census data was not correct. Whoever devised the new formula had conveniently removed preschool enrolments from the count. They were included in the February figures but, had they been included in the new chart, it would have shown the extent of overcapacity.
In Minister Rattenbury’s defence, from his surprise when I pointed this out in estimates, he was not aware of this data manipulation. But he has done nothing since then to correct the record and has offered little more than a temporary demountable at Garran primary for 18 months to fix the problem; not much of a response and not much of a fix.
But it goes to highlight a consistent pattern of managing community expectations. I would prefer to use stronger language, but Madam Speaker would no doubt pull me up if I did. It is a not dissimilar story to how hospital records have been recorded and reported and it has the same intention of calming an otherwise concerned community.
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