Page 2237 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 August 2016
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acknowledging that some of our schools are under pressure because of the changing population patterns in some of our suburbs. He was very churlish about the fact that I tabled the new school capacity projections and I outlined updates to school capacity profiles. Mr Doszpot may have also been distracted during the announcements I made as part of the 2016-17 budget addressing a number of these concerns.
Beyond that, it appears that Mr Doszpot has not taken the time to even google this information, as much of the information he is asking for in today’s motion is actually available on the Education Directorate website. I made it available there in a spirit of transparency and openness with our community, enabling people in our community to look at this information for themselves, as well as for other members of this place to do so. I directed that the information be made publically available—and that is an unprecedented publication of forward capacity projections, as far as I am aware—because, as I said, I wanted to promote transparency and clarity for members of this place, parents and school communities.
So I do not think this is a very genuine motion. I think the motion on paper was just an excuse for Mr Doszpot to give the speech that he wanted to give. That is fair enough; that is his prerogative. But given that I will respond to the motion that he put forward today, I will focus on the information that he sought. There is little point in spending too much time on it really, but I would like to make sure that these matters are on the record so that if anybody goes back and looks at this transcript at a later time, they can see the information that Mr Doszpot asked for in his motion.
As I said, I have already acknowledged that there are some schools facing enrolment pressures. I have made no secret about that. I have not denied it. All you have to do is look at the data to know it. I have outlined what we are doing to support those schools.
Right across the ACT, enrolments in public schools are growing, with our school census showing a 14.9 per cent increase in the past five years. As I have publicly stated, we have no reason to suppose that the enrolment growth rates Canberra public schools experienced in the past few years will abate and I and the ACT government offer an ironclad guarantee that no student will be turned away from a high quality and free education.
I am actually very pleased to see the very significant growth in public education numbers in the ACT. As I said in question time, they are far outstripping the ACT’s overall rate of population growth and I think this is a strong endorsement of the ACT’s public school system in particular. This is something which Mr Doszpot has just sought to paint a very bleak picture of but in fact it shows that the parents of Canberra know that these are great schools with great teachers that are producing good outcomes when it comes to educating their children. When the people are voting with their feet in putting their children into public schools in the ACT, that is a testament to the ACT’s education system.
I have clearly outlined that we have included all teaching spaces and student spaces when considering the overall capacity of schools. Both Mr Doszpot and sections of the media seemed to have missed this in my tabling statement in June this year. I will quote what I said and then I will give my commentary on their commentary. I said:
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