Page 4620 - Week 12 - Thursday, 15 October 2009
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agreement, because I think that many members in this Assembly will see the importance of an education for every child and the importance that no child be left behind. Therefore, inquiries like this can encourage those who may not normally engage in the discussions and dialogue around education delivery in the territory to participate in that inquiry and put forward their thoughts.
I noticed, having looked at the standing committee’s website, that there are already about five or six submissions that have come in. A couple of those submissions are from community organisations and it is good to see them participating. One of them is from the Youth Coalition of the ACT, an organisation that I previously worked for. They raised the different groups of young people who can be left behind or who can become slightly disadvantaged. So they look at young carers. That is a young person who is caring for a sick relative or is heavily involved with the family in caring for a sick relative, or it could be a person that is very close to the family. There are also, of course, refugee young people and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people.
We also have to remember that, unfortunately, there are a number of young people here in the territory who are homeless, who do not have the support of a family. So there are many different groups that we do need to have a look at when looking at designing education delivery and an education system. It is a complex thing. It is not something that we can do quickly. It does need to take care. It needs to be well researched in order to ensure that we have the sorts of programs that can engage, and continue to engage, children and young people from a variety of different backgrounds and with different learning styles and needs. We need to ensure that we have those programs running through the mainstream school settings and also that we have a very good connection with the range of alternative school settings that may be available and that they are properly resourced—as well resourced as the mainstream schools.
Going back to the suspensions discussion that we had in the Assembly this week, I note that many parents are very concerned about things like bullying in our schools. We need to understand that schools reflect the wider society and, unfortunately, our society has not been able to eliminate bullying. That is something that is reflected in many different settings, including schools. It is an area that we really do need to tackle and put in a great effort to ensure that our schools have a robust culture that does not accept bullying and that young people in these schools are given the tools to be able to build their resilience. That is not just resilience regarding the sorts of challenges they are going to be facing, but also they need to know that bullying is not okay and that it is important to stand up and tell fellow students.
This really goes hand in hand with the importance of things like anti-racism programs in schools. We cannot let this go. We need to be vigilant around issues such as bullying and racism. It is incredibly important if we are going to make sure that we have healthy and happy students and that we have safe school environments.
With this inquiry, we look forward to the outcomes and how the government, in its response, can address the disparity in education brought about through the barriers experienced by students. Closing the education gap for the disadvantaged, surely, is part of delivering the sort of policy needed to advance education for all students. This is the area where the challenge lies for the government, as developing policy and
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