Page 831 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 2 April 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
were assessed; and the lack of respect that was shown for the communities and individuals concerned.
I know that the ACT government argued that it consulted and that it changed its plans on the basis of the consultation and made the hard decisions that no-one else would make. However, the Greens have had three major concerns with both the process and the outcome which time has confirmed. First, there was no convincing educational basis for the decisions made or any analysis of the challenges facing public education which we are told the plan was designed to address. Second, the impact on communities was not properly considered. Finally, the impetus for this dramatic action was a secret report based, it would seem, on a simplistic process of benchmarking costs—purely a business case, we assume, which ignored social and environmental aspects.
What we need from education policy in the ACT and in the education debate is a focus on the real issues and challenges that face us as a community. It concerns me still that the process was overseen by a new minister. I expect that he is now better informed on education; I wonder if he would so unhesitatingly put forward such an educationally unsound proposal if he was asked to do so now.
I recall that in answer to a question on notice the minister for education denied that social and economic status and the educational attainment of families were key indicators of a student’s educational outcomes. That was a denial of one of the most basic tenets in education policy. I note also that the ACT government chose to become extremely offended when it was pointed out that the socioeconomic profiles of schools that were closed were in most cases lower than the average across Canberra. Earlier this year, both the Productivity Commission and PISA—participation in international studies of student achievement—analyses found that the ACT was slipping towards lower equity across its school systems.
The Stanhope government started well. When it was elected in 2001, its first educational initiative was to set up an inquiry into educational funding in the ACT. Lyndsay Connors, who conducted that inquiry, pointed to growing pockets of disadvantage in our community. Now the ACER analysis of the PISA information, prepared specifically for the ACT government, has made the achievement gap for students across the ACT even more obvious.
If you look at the graphs that accompany that report, you will see that the ACT has a steeper gradient than any state and that students at the lower end of the spectrum experiencing the most disadvantage are further behind their peers than anywhere in Australia other than the Northern Territory. I do not see why the minister keeps denying that. When you look at the figures carefully it is clear that the claim that those students in the ACT experiencing disadvantage are doing better than others in Australia is just not supported. Where is the ability to read a graph that leads the government to make that denial?
Mr Barr: Ask ACER. That is what they have said.
DR FOSKEY: The graphs tell a different story. Research by Barbara Preston last year—which built on work she conducted in 2003—provided an analysis of family
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .