Page 5020 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 28 November 2018
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(c) include development of the action plan as part of the Future of Education Implementation Plan that will be presented to the ACT Legislative Assembly during February 2019.”.
I welcome the opportunity to talk about the vision of the ACT government for education across the ACT. In August this year I released the future of education strategy that lays out a road map for work over the next 10 years. The strategy was developed through a sustained conversation with the community, with over 5,000 Canberrans having their say. The direction set out in the strategy was developed following the identification of 10 common themes identified by the community. These were consolidated into four foundations.
Young people were central to the development of this future vision, with 44 per cent of feedback coming from children and young people. The ACT government placed a strong emphasis on the importance of hearing the views of children and young people because students need to be engaged in their learning. We also believe that students should be active participants in their learning, making informed choices about what they learn and how they learn. The community agrees with this.
This is why one of the four foundations of the future of education strategy places students at the centre, alongside empowering learning professionals, building strong communities for learning and ensuring that we have systems supporting learning. By ensuring that students are at the centre, we enable each student to tread their own educational pathway based upon their developing interests, knowledge and skills. These interests may be in a variety of different subjects, ranging from health and physical education to technologies or languages. Each child in the ACT has gifts and talents across a range of areas. Personalising learning ensures that every child has a great potential to learn, progress and achieve.
The future of education strategy establishes a strategic policy direction that informs future initiatives and project work and, at a high level, outlines actions to be taken over the next 10 years. It is not a laundry list of disconnected things. It also includes principles for implementation of the strategy, which include student agency and inclusion. Through student agency, our young people get a greater say in what and how they learn. Through inclusion, diversity is embraced, with students learning to participate effectively and respectfully in a diverse society.
Diversity includes cultural and linguistic diversity. The ACT government believes in the importance of language education to ensure that our students are set up for success. This is why we have ensured that a number of educational language associations were involved through the development of the future of education strategy. This saw the provision of feedback in phase 1 of the conversation through to engaging in the testing foundations, proposed policy directions and actions in phase 2. This engagement resulted in access to language education being facilitated through placing students at the centre, providing student agency in relation to learning, and ensuring that inclusion is core to how the strategy is implemented.
Madam Speaker, Ms Lee’s motion is incorrect on this issue. Canberra is a city that celebrates and embraces diversity and multiculturalism. This is strongly reflected by
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