Page 2231 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 16 August 2006
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consultation and discussion in the community and are widely supported. The bill does not simply stop at providing for proper consultation, because it requires a detailed statement of reasons to be issued by the minister whenever a school is to be closed or two schools are to be amalgamated. The formulation of this requirement in law is sourced from the commonwealth’s Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977, and so draws on a well-established body of jurisprudence geared towards procedural fairness. These provisions will mean that each affected community will know exactly why the minister has chosen to close its school. This will not be a generalised reason.
The regime contemplated by the bill will require the minister to publish the reasons in a daily newspaper and to give specific notice to specified friends of the schools, which includes the principals, teachers, parents, the school’s board and the school’s P&C. Notice of itself may not be seen as a great boon, but when it is combined with the provisions for appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal it strengthens the rights of the people of the ACT. The notice and statements of reasons will require genuine transparency by the minister wishing to close or amalgamate schools. An appeal mechanism will give the friends of that school an independent avenue for appealing the minister’s decision, having their side of the story and the evidence tested against the minister’s reasons by an impartial body. Mr Barr has repeatedly called for rational debate, so he should find none of this objectionable. These are the main elements of the bill as they relate to general citizens rights, and they are long overdue.
The other major prong of this bill relates to the broad structure of the ACT government school system. When it comes to the closure or amalgamation of individual schools, the everyday citizens of the ACT are as much the custodians of their local schools as we are in this place, hence the features of the bill just outlined. However, when it comes to the general structure of our government school system we in this place stand in the special role of guardianship. The current morphology of the ACT government school system is no accident but the result of many years careful initial planning and practical refinement.
When the ACT system of colleges was introduced in the 1970s, for instance, the time taken to examine the issues was measured not in weeks or months but years. Our college system was radical at the time but has since amply demonstrated its benefits and the benefits of the thoughts and consideration that produced it. The use of primary schools and high schools as the other major configurations for grouping students in their age cohorts was not so radical but it was an arrangement developed at length after serious consideration. There are a few minor variations around but the general shape of our government school system is readily discernible and it does not include stand-alone middle schools, for instance. To embrace stand-alone middle schools as proposed in Towards 2020 is a big step. Indeed, in speaking generally about colleges and middle schools, the 1972 Campbell report, which is entitled Secondary education for Canberra—Mr Barr should read this document—on page 33 notes:
It would be next to impossible to impose such a large and revolutionary change on the community in one single step.
Perhaps it is time for us to discuss in this community whether we want stand-alone middle schools, because the Campbell commission certainly considered it back in 1972, but let the community have that say. Mr Barr seems to have a penchant for remarking
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