Page 2120 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 June 2018
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If that is the case, why has the directorate, presumably under the leadership of this minister, started reducing priority enrolment areas and forcing Canberra region New South Wales students to schools that have low enrolments, neither of which are long-term solutions? When a school that is designed to cater for over 300 students has an enrolment of only 120, you have a problem. When a school that is designed to cater for 1,000 has an enrolment of 1,120, you also have a problem.
I see very little in the budget to address these structural enrolment issues. Promising to build more capacity now has too long a lag time. Promising to build more capacity now—when the government has been in power for 17 years and has control over new dwellings and major infrastructure projects driving population into certain parts of Canberra, when the government has had no choice but to house students in demountables and use halls, libraries and previously used quiet areas as classrooms—is not just not good enough.
The same haphazard approach appears with the decision to provide laptops to students. We have had much fanfare about laptops in schools, but every time I and my colleague the former shadow minister for education, Mr Wall, have asked about the educational measurement, projection or goal for such an outlay, all we get is the standard response about equity. Educational equity is not whether someone has a specific piece of equipment; it is whether they have the same access to the best education that the ACT has to offer.
Mr Steel’s motion refers to improving access to quality early childhood education. I know that he is personally passionate about this issue. The government has allocated $6 million over four years to “develop a strategy”. Actual places might be more relevant. The government’s attitude to early childhood education is made very clear in its accountability indicators. It has a target of 4,650 enrolments, which is the same as last year and lower than the actuals. A footnote says:
The indicator data … should be considered a projection as preschool is not compulsory and is subject to parental choice.
Yes, it is subject to parental choice, but too often that choice is Buckley’s and none.
For too many parents, especially in some of our newer suburbs, there are no places in preschool, and the directorate response is to placate parents with the reminder that it is not a compulsory year. This was confirmed to me in an answer to a representation I made to the minister on behalf of a parent who had been sent away from her local preschool because there were no spaces. She responded: “Enrolment in preschool is not compulsory and, as such, if the preschool a student wishes to attend has reached capacity, neighbouring schools are able to offer placements for that year.” In other words, “It is not our problem.”
If this government truly believes in the value of quality early childhood education, and I know that Mr Steel is passionate about this, it has an odd way of showing it. So much for all their hype and rhetoric about how important it is! Prior to the budget, the minister announced that the government would be investing $9.2 million over four
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