Page 994 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 May 2020
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(3) acknowledges and thanks:
(a) teachers and their union, school staff, early childhood education and care workers, and out of school hours care staff for their resilience, dedication and effort to sustain learning in incredibly difficult conditions;
(b) staff in the Education Directorate, who have worked without break for many months to ensure that school education could continue, and have designed and planned an entirely new approach to learning;
(c) school cleaners and building services officers for their work providing safe and clean schools, and for undertaking additional work while schools are unoccupied;
(d) transport staff for their assistance and adaptability in providing safe transport to the remote learning hubs;
(e) community services organisations, who have stepped in to support the Government’s delivery of learning for those students who have been unable to learn remotely from home;
(f) the ACT Council of Parents and Citizens Associations, who have been actively engaged in assisting the Government to work through difficult decisions about arrangements for school education;
(g) Catholic and independent schools, for their cooperation in aligning with the Government’s approach to school education where possible;
(h) the Emergency Services Agency for their reliable and effective logistical assistance, for example, delivering Chromebooks and internet access devices to families; and
(i) students and parents, for their flexibility, patience and understanding through a difficult, rapidly-changing and uncertain environment; and
(4) notes that the ACT Government has announced a staged return to on-campus learning commencing on 18 May, when remote learning hubs will cease to operate.”.
MR COE (Yerrabi—Leader of the Opposition) (3.26): I rise to support the position of the Canberra Liberals and Ms Lee that schools should be open in Canberra for the families that need them. This is a position that is not new. It is a position that we have been stating for a long time. We firmly believe that there are many families in Canberra that are stressed and many kids in Canberra who are not getting the education that they need. As has been remarked by numerous people during this debate, it is some of the most vulnerable kids and some of the most disadvantaged kids who are set to lose the most as a result of this online learning model.
We firmly believe that you need to follow the health advice when it comes to dealing with the pandemic. We firmly believe that the health advisers, the doctors and all the experts should be informing the policy. It seems that that is so for the vast majority of portfolios. In fact, perhaps the only portfolio where the health advice has not been strictly followed is in the education portfolio. Why is it that the health advice is current and applicable for all the other portfolios but not for education? Even today in question time we heard the transport minister say that he was going to listen to the commonwealth health advice and to the ACT health advice regarding public transport. That is a sound thing to say. It also highlights the contrast between the two ministers.
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