Page 93 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 13 December 2016
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As a proud resident of Kambah I know that it is the hidden secret of Canberra, but it is in need of urban renewal. I am proud that after the campaign that I ran during the election Labor will deliver a $2.3 million to upgrade Kambah village. This project, combined with private upgrades to the supermarket building, will significantly enhance this important community space and deliver on the Kambah village master plan. I want to assure Kambah residents that getting Kambah village upgraded is a priority for me.
I believe that Labor is best placed to manage our city’s challenges, harness the opportunities and ensure that the most vulnerable and disadvantaged are included and not left behind by growth. I will be working in my new role to help drive Labor’s social policy agenda, including in education. There could not be a more important opportunity for Canberra’s future than education. We are a city that is built on the strength of our human capital—in our universities, our government departments, our businesses and community organisations. Advancing our human capital agenda here takes preparation and planning. Over the past decade I have worked as an advocate in the community sector and in government with a focus on improving access to a quality education for all children.
I am looking forward to contributing to improving our education system here in the ACT and to grow our human capital here. But for us as Labor members, education plays a far more important role than just economics. It is one of Piketty’s “decisive forces” in building equality, giving people the opportunity to get ahead regardless of their background. We need to ensure that every child gets access to a quality education right through to university and TAFE. We know from research that the education gap—the visible emergence of inequality—actually starts to open at age three, before children even enter the classroom for the first time. Research shows that children in disadvantaged families hear 30 million fewer words, on average, and have less than half the vocabulary of upper income peers by age three. It is no wonder that these children reach school behind, and, by then, it is much harder to catch up.
For this reason early intervention is so important across so many areas, whether it is child protection, juvenile justice, disability and inclusion, and particularly in education. There could not be a more important task for any incoming member of the Assembly than ensuring that more young children have access to quality early learning in the home and in early childhood services. We know that children who attend early childhood education have amplified cognitive skills, and that vulnerable children benefit the most. Studies from the UK show that children who access a quality early childhood program for two to three years have much higher results in literacy and numeracy at the end of high school.
Early childhood education is at least as decisive in shaping a student’s results at the end of high school as the whole of primary school. Yet in this country and in this territory we only provide universal access to one year of preschool education, with the exception of our fantastic Koori preschool program. It is of great concern to me that not all children are involved in quality early learning experiences younger than four years of age. Vulnerable children benefit the most from accessing quality early childhood education because they often do not have exposure to rich learning
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