Page 3560 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 12 October 1994
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What would such a policy produce? I have already mentioned the slick marketing and glossy prospectuses which will entice new enrolments. We can add to that the token regard for equity and access. What happens to students with special needs when their school closes? What happens to those students who depend on public transport or ride their bike to school when that school closes? Unfettered competition among schools will have serious deleterious effects on many of them. Some will prosper, and many will fail. Perhaps the worst aspect of a school stumbling and threatening to fall by the wayside is the terrible uncertainty that this generates for all concerned - students, parents, teachers and other staff. When rumours start to fly, the self-fulfilling prophecy of closure eats away at all confidence in the school. Ms Szuty, in commenting on the Belconnen task force report, said that there should be regional promotion. But that is still the same principle. What she was talking about was not schools within an area or schools across the whole system promoting each other, but regional promotion. It is still promotion. It is keeping Belconnen kids stuck in Belconnen. That may be a good thing; but I do not think you can make that argument and at the same time criticise movement across boundaries.
It is difficult for any school to remain viable if the story is out that the school is in difficulty, that it cannot present high-quality education programs or that it is likely to close. If parents think that there is a likelihood of a school closing while their children are there, they will simply take the children away. The Government is providing an integrated system of schools which ensures that students, no matter where they live in the ACT, have access to high-quality education programs from kindergarten to Year 12. We know that parents want, and expect, the right to choose where their children go to school. We support that. We know that parents of students with specific learning needs expect that those needs will be met in a comprehensive and professional way. We support that. Children in primary school who start to learn a language other than English - for example, Japanese - should have a reasonable expectation that they can take that language through to Year 12. This requires planning and coordination among schools, not unfettered competition between them.
Certainly, more can always be done to balance enrolments, particularly in the high school and college sectors. As well as the urban planning aspects of maintaining as stable a school-age population as possible, this Government is supporting initiatives taken by the Department of Education and Training to ensure universal access to quality programs. Access to quality programs is the key to this issue.
MR STEFANIAK (4.19): Madam Speaker, firstly, I must congratulate Ms Szuty for finally realising that there is a problem with enrolment levels in government schools.
Mr Moore: Which Bill Stefaniak recognised four years ago!
MR STEFANIAK: It has been a problem, on and off, for longer than that. There certainly has been a problem over the last three years, as is becoming very apparent. To point that out, I intend to go through some figures which my absent colleague, Mr Cornwell, has spoken about in this Second Assembly. For Mr Wood, the Minister, to say that Ms Szuty has no answer is a little bit rich. Perhaps he should look in the mirror. Here is a Minister who cannot even decide whether or not a carport should go up.
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