Page 2790 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 13 August 2019
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It is not at every school that parents have expressed fear for their children’s safety, but it is enough for thousands of people to have signed a petition to have the issue of violence in our schools looked at. We need to remind ourselves that this only came about because the minister refused to accept that there was a problem in one school, much less many. The minister stalled, prevaricated and provided waffly scripted non-committal responses to the opposition’s questions over a number of weeks.
It was only when the minister tried yet again to bluff her way out of a motion that I led in this place that she realised the game was up. She delivered her “nothing to see here” speech to a gallery of parents who were directly affected by what was happening at the coalface in our schools, who had contacted her and the directorate with no response. They were not impressed.
But has much or anything actually changed? I would like to believe so, but I am yet to see the evidence. In estimates we were told yet again that schools were rolling out a much referenced program called positive behaviour for learning and that it would address the bullying and other unacceptable behaviours. We were told that the Shaddock report had itself recommended widespread adoption of school-wide positive behaviour support as a highly effective alternative to traditional approaches to discipline and behavioural management.
The Shaddock report was published in 2015. Parents of students were lodging complaints about unsafe schools, based on what the opposition has been able to find through records, as early as 2017. But it is a behaviour and a practice that has been long entrenched in a number of schools.
One has to ask why only 51 schools, or about 60 per cent of all government schools, have this framework program operating. If this program is as successful as the minister suggests, surely all schools and all staff should be acquainted with its benefits and its rollout should have had it implemented across the entire system as a priority.
Other bandaids that are on offer include smiling mind programs, mindfulness training and some schools have used circle of friends. But when I asked on notice what schools had trialled mindfulness training, like so much of what is apparently happening in our schools, that information is not collected centrally at a directorate level.
The ACT Council of P&C Associations conducted 10 workshops to address violence in schools. But answers to questions that I put on notice have revealed that only 53 directorate staff attended any of the workshops and that four of the workshops were for identified participants only. A total of only 117 people attended the 10 workshops. I wonder how well and how widely they were promoted. Was this just another, “Look, we are doing something” exercise? The outcome of the workshops is to be provided to the minister.
Additionally, the Legislative Assembly’s education committee is yet to complete its inquiry into school violence and report to the Assembly and the minister’s own
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