Page 2554 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 9 August 2016
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using the ACT education system as a case study internationally. They are producing videos and telling to a global audience the story of the success of the rollout of IT in ACT schools. That is something this jurisdiction can be very proud of.
When it comes to this year’s budget, the IT upgrade for school administration is a significant investment, providing $10 million over the next four years. This will provide for the development of a modern, fully integrated school business system that will streamline parents’ interactions with schools and provide more efficient administration for our staff. This has been welcomed by parents because it is important for ACT public schools to keep up to date with modern families and enable parents to easily engage with their children’s school through technology. As it was quipped at the time, this should mean the end of the lost note at the bottom of the school bag and a greater ability for parents to interact on a range of important matters relating to their child, through their device—their iPad, their desktop computer, whatever their chosen means is. It will streamline parent interaction with schools and provide improved and more efficient administration.
This system, when it is delivered, will provide an enhanced online enrolment experience so that parents need to tell their story only once. It will provide functionality for additional digital transactions, including permissions, consent, payments, and updating of student details, reducing the number of paper forms between home and school and reducing the need for repetition of forms or information.
There will be online attendance marking and faster absence notification to parents and guardians. We will see a greater rollout of digital student academic reports and, of course, improved administrative efficiency for schools through automated workflows, including financial reporting, board reports, student wellbeing, payments and receipts, and asset management. All of this means more convenience for parents and better use of the valuable resources in our schooling system, less time on administration, and more time to do other things.
The government is also investing $400,000 in 2016-17 to upgrade the current Board of Senior Secondary Studies grade moderation system. This upgrade will ensure ongoing quality of student grading and provide schools with more efficient access to data. When I met with the BSSS recently they were very upbeat about this and see real opportunity for continuing the great reputation of the ACT’s college system, of which this is an important part.
While I am on the issue of infrastructure and the like, I noted Mr Doszpot’s comments this evening on Garran Primary School and his sense that this is some sort of half-baked solution. In fact, this is a very strategic solution. In all his commentary on this in recent times, Mr Doszpot is studiously ignoring the fact that the projections for the student population of Garran Primary School are for it to peak in the next couple of years and then dip. This is a reflection of the change in priority enrolment area.
The government is working actively with the school to manage their population, and that is why we believe that, with other improvements in the school, there will be capacity at Garran over time as that population comes down. In the meantime, additional capacity has been provided through the provision of transportable
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