Page 2874 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 14 August 2018
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Following questions I put on notice, we learnt that in 2019 the student to psychologist ratio will be one in 638, and in 2020 it will be one in 622, a slight improvement on the current ratio of one in 676. However, you have to include every allied health professional that may spend any amount of time dealing with students with mental health or challenging behavioural issues to meet the recommended one in 500 ratio, and then only by 2020. By then, if the current trends continue, growing enrolments will throw that ratio out once again.
We already know that this will not be enough to meet desired levels. The committee’s recommendation that the government consider more reflects that. The government response to that is “agreed in principle”. Stand by for a surprise 2020 election promise that would no doubt take another decade to come to fruition if they were to get back into government. The adage of fooling some of the people some of the time comes to mind on many government promises.
The committee has also recommended that the ACT government work with a wide range of appropriately trained professional staff, including psychologists and allied health experts, to meet the increased demand for these services in our schools. The government has said that it agrees to do this. Given that they believe they are doing all they need to do, I will await any additional efforts in this space with interest.
Madam Deputy Speaker, it is important that schools provide the safest physical and emotional environment for all students and all staff. Without a genuine commitment to providing such services, the 2015 Shaddock work will have been in vain.
Education is a large budget item, but it is so much more than that. Like health, it has the ability to impact the lives of many people and change many futures. We cannot sit back and suggest we are doing okay. We cannot accept that fair, average quality is where all our schools should be and that our parents should be content with that.
We should at all times, and in all schools, be striving for excellence. As I have said before, we hear a lot from the education minister about equity but little about excellence. Let us focus less on government versus non-government and concentrate more on flexible choice and best fit for our students and families, whether that be home schooling, a small, local Catholic school or a large, multi-grade government school. The world is not equitable, and Chromebooks are not going to make it so. Let us focus on excellence instead, and push our schools, our teachers and our students to be the very best they can be and to achieve more than they ever thought possible.
MS BERRY (Ginninderra—Deputy Chief Minister, Minister for Education and Early Childhood Development, Minister for Housing and Suburban Development, Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence, Minister for Women and Minister for Sport and Recreation) (4.12): I am happy to talk about education in the Legislative Assembly today, and the government’s commitments to delivering quality, accessible education and early childhood learning through local schools so that Canberrans can have the best start in life.
The 2018 budget will deliver new and expanded schools for our growing suburbs and recruit more teachers to bolster our world-class education system. The budget also
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