Page 3731 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 17 October 1990
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MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, I did not specifically take the advice of the Interim Territory Planning Authority at all. The education department, through the appropriate Minister, considered possible ways of reducing expenditure in its budget. The Minister was the person who generated the proposal for school closures. It was he who examined possible closures. It was he who sought advice from the Interim Territory Planning Authority and when I, as a member of the Government, began to consider the question as a matter of Government policy a great deal of that work had been done.
I did not personally seek advice from the ITPA; it was not my responsibility to do so. I am satisfied that the proper advice was sought at the right time and that it was properly taken into account by the Government in the decisions to close half a dozen schools.
Year 12 Students - National Assessment Standards
DR KINLOCH: Mr Speaker, my question is to Mr Humphries, the Minister for Education, and it is to do with national assessment standards for year 12 students, as suggested by the Commonwealth Minister for Employment, Education and Training, John Dawkins. I would preface this by wondering whether our own achievement standards are not better than those of the Commonwealth. However, has the Alliance Government given consideration to the ACT educational system adhering to those national assessment standards?
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I thank Dr Kinloch for that question because it is a matter on which I have been asked to comment in recent days and I think it would be appropriate to indicate the way in which the Government is proceeding. The Government, as a whole, has not fully considered its position yet and, in particular, it has not considered whether there would be value in the ACT adopting any forthcoming national assessment standards. I would expect that we would support a proposal of that kind, providing the assessment system was optional and, in the case of the ACT, was additional to any of the methods of assessment available from the ACT.
The ACT currently has a system of continuous assessment of year 11 and year 12 students by individual schools operating under guidelines set down by my ministry. This system, which is an important component of our school based curriculum development, provides a measure of a student's knowledge, skills and potential for success in employment or further education. As a result, it has contributed to the highest retention rates of any system in the country. Over 90 per cent of students who obtain a tertiary entrance score in the ACT are eligible to attend tertiary institutions across Australia. Studies show that ACT students who continue on to university perform as well as
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