Page 4354 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 30 November 1994
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Mr Cornwell: And the parents, by implication.
MR WOOD: On your terms, I then had two options. There were about 350 students in our special schools. I could have said to the 350 students, "From day one next year, every one of you is going to go into a mainstream school". That is your proposal. This is a very strong program for us. The other thing is that when we undertake a program, as with land development, we do it steadily and carefully. As with integration programs, we make sure that we make a success of them. There was no way, even in that first year, that I could have integrated more than six students. I had to convince the schools, the parent community in the schools and the teachers in those schools that this was something that was going to work. There was a very considerable amount of anxiety in our school system as to how this might be done, because Mr Humphries had never done a thing about it. I had to convince them, critically, in that first year or two, that this was a workable program.
We provided extra support to these intellectually disabled students. We provided 0.7 of a teachers aide to each one of them to go in, side by side with that student, and to mix with other students. We provided professional development to teachers and support to schools. The program has been a success. We have been working through that - the parent community knows this - at six or seven students a year, and I think we are well up into the twenties by now. That seems outrageous to you people; but what has happened is that we have successfully convinced our school communities that this integration program not only is designed well but is workable. That is where we are at. This year, as for other years, not every student whose parents applied was able to be placed. The school system and the teaching staff still cannot take the 40 that you mentioned, let alone the 300 or so that remain in our special schools. This will be a long and careful program of integration.
Let me tell you something else. We have not integrated all the physically disabled children. We have not started that program as well as we would like to because - I was going to say that you would understand, but you would not - there is a further high cost to that, in that in most of our older schools wheelchair access is simply not as widespread as it should be. Mr Cornwell does not know, and certainly his leader does not know, that this week I am negotiating to get a very severely physically disabled but quite bright child into one of our mainstream schools. We did the same last year. We are working carefully through a program. I regret that, out of your ignorance, you want to criticise it.
MR CORNWELL: I wish to ask a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. It is apparent that the Minister has missed the important aspect of the question. I am sorry that I do not have a blackboard here to help you, Minister. Minister, are you prepared to review the admittance procedures for those children who have been in this program and wish to continue in the program to the higher levels of education? The argument that you are advancing does not seem to make sense to this side of the house. You cannot put them in and pull them out again. Are you prepared to examine the conditions so that the children who are in the scheme now at the lower levels of schooling can continue on to higher years, and stop this frustration and disappointment?
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