Page 199 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 December 2008

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MR BARR: I will not have the full information on enrolments in the surrounding high schools until a bit later this year. Obviously, schools continue to take enrolments, and are able to do so, throughout the school year, so I will not have a final set of numbers on that for some time. However, I can advise and remind the member that the Ginninderra district high school that used to operate on that site, before it was closed and rebuilt as the Kingsford Smith school, obviously provided the high school service for that catchment. So there was a high school there before. In times past that high school had up to 1,000 students.

It is worth noting that at the time of closure in 2005 enrolments had dropped to about 180, meaning that of course it was very difficult to operate an effective education program and, secondly, that the local community had voted with their feet and were going to attend other schools. In that west Belconnen area, though—and this is why the government invested so much money in the jewel in the public education crown in west Belconnen—it is the only public high school, so it is a necessary piece of infrastructure. I anticipate that, as has been the trend when new schools have opened with world-class infrastructure, there will be an impact on the surrounding schools.

Our assessment—and this has certainly been borne out by some anecdotal evidence in discussions with parents and community members in the context of the election campaign—is that the new facilities are perhaps appealing to parents and students who were in the non-government system. It may well be that this new facility serves the purpose of producing a significant return to public education in west Belconnen and will be a significant step forward in the government’s overall agenda, which is to ensure that our public education system is as strong and competitive as it possibly can be and that that system is able to draw students away from non-government schools because of the quality of education provided. This world-class facility will be an important addition to the suite of public education facilities in west Belconnen and we look forward very much to its opening in 2009.

MR SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Ms Le Couteur.

MS LE COUTEUR: Yes. What strategic planning has the minister undertaken to assess the long-term sustainability of all government schools in the west Belconnen area?

MR BARR: I thank the member for the supplementary question. A considerable amount of strategic planning was undertaken, firstly, by the department of education, going back to the earlier part of this decade, in relation to their projected enrolments for public schools in that region. It is worth noting, in the context of school-aged children in the ACT, that we have witnessed in the past decade something like an eight per cent reduction in the overall number of school-aged children as our city continues to age. So the overarching feature on education provision in the territory is one of declining school-aged population. Even with more recent increases in birth rates, they are still nowhere near matching what was the case 10, 20 years ago. So we know that, projecting forward, there will be fewer school-aged children.

What there is, though, is regional difference. Where we see significant growth, undoubtedly, is in Gungahlin but also, as new suburbs come on line in west


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