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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (11 November) . . Page.. 3961 ..

Debate resumed from 28 August 1997, on motion by Mr Stefaniak:

That this Bill be agreed to in principle.

MS McRAE (5.37): Mr Speaker, I think, as the Minister said in his speech, this legislation is long overdue. It is absolutely time that the ACT had its own stand-alone statutory authority for the Board of Senior Secondary Studies. It is the case, I believe, with pretty well every other State. The Board of Senior Secondary Studies performs an incredibly important role in controlling and managing the future of our students and their career prospects under its responsibilities in terms of Years 11 and 12. The principal functions of the board, as we know, are to accredit or register courses taught by recognised educational institutions; to approve, consistent with national agreements, educational institutions for teaching vocational education courses; to establish guidelines for the development of courses by the board or by a educational institution; to establish principles and procedures for the assessment of attainments of students and the moderation of those assessments; to provide to persons who have undertaken courses or units of courses certificates of their attainments; and to provide information on the performance of students and former students, and the policies and procedures of the board. It also, of course, can review from time to time its own operations and the operation of this Act, and advise the Minister on any section referred to in this Act.

In the ACT the Board of Senior Secondary Studies takes on an even greater importance because we do not have external exams, and a stand-alone body that provides authority and the consistency of quality in our certificates and the management of courses in the ACT has to be totally beyond reproach or beyond criticism. So this Bill, as I say, is long overdue and is strongly supported by the Labor Party. The claim by the Government that it is based more or less on the model that has been operating for years with some changes has to be contested a little. The Government, after long work by members of subcommittees and other members who have paid attention and worked with the board for a long time, has decided to put on parents. It has nominated positions for parents who are not members of the current board. Parents will, in future, have two appointees, one from the government sector and one from the non-government sector; so there is a nice little pair there. Similarly, it has said that employers will be represented for the first time. Here we find an interesting shift in logic in the whole approach to the membership of the board, which I will come back to.

I would like at this point to thank the Minister and his staff for the advice and the information that they have provided to me, and the courtesy and care with which they have responded to all my questions. I am able to proceed quite well informed on what happens in other places and the sorts of decisions that the department had to make when they were coming up to the membership of the board. When we look around Australia, pretty well every authority has the same problem as besets the ACT, namely, that it is almost impossible to get a board of any sort of manageable size. I know that anybody who looks at a board that is greater than eight people says, "Oh, oh; how on earth do they ever come to a decision?". Big boards are fairly difficult to deal with. The ACT has not done too badly. I think it is 13 members. It is one of the smaller boards around Australia.

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