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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (24 September) . . Page.. 3257 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

There is a summary of the understandings and skills that children are supposed to come to school with if they have been living in the "supposedly" correct sort of home for preparation for literacy. You have 90 per cent of your kids coming through with these skills and 10 per cent not. What are we doing about those children?

I do not find it sufficient to say that people will comment on this. This is a specialist area. The general person reading this will think, "Fantastic! Look what our schools are doing. Look at the programs they have. Yes, yes, yes; all this sounds fine", because 90 per cent of us are in family relationships, have children, and these are our circumstances. We do not come from backgrounds where literacy is not valued or another language is spoken at home all the time or there is not time for the children - a range of cultural, social, class things that do not fit what the vast majority come with. What do you do with the children who come to school and do not have the home influence on literacy development? That is what is missing from this paper. The paper says:

Parents have an important role to play in the education of their children. Significant research suggests that when parents are encouraged to value their own efforts as influential teachers and continue in this role throughout the children's school experience there is a positive effect on students' attitudes, learning, and behaviour. All schools should continue to provide parent training programs as many schools currently do. Parents as Tutors programs could also be inclusive of pre-school parents.

But remember what I said before in the quote from the P and C paper: Those very programs can then end up being counterproductive because all they do is overlay an image of the right sort of parent and exclude those who are not. The paper continues:

Schools within clusters could combine for the presentation of parent programs ...

Why cannot schools in clusters combine to assist the children who are missing out on this, instead of this constant "blame the victim" syndrome developing? That is what is missing. That is what is not there. I accept that maybe it will come up in comment; but it is an area of profound importance, the obverse of what happens, and, without even mentioning it, 90 per cent of people will read this paper and think it is fine. Who will say, "Hang on a minute. What about the kid who does not come from here? Why does the school not have responsibility? What does the school do when these kids come through without any of this support? Where are the school support programs for these kids"? Even if the schools are labelling everybody as having parents already, who will say that this is not quite right?

I do not accept that its exclusion leads to inevitable comment on it. I think it ought to be explored as an area. I do not take the Minister's line that the testing has produced these results. Everybody in this room has watched Sesame Street. Where did Sesame Street begin? It began with the Headstart program. What was it there for?

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