Page 5316 - Week 12 - Thursday, 28 October 2010

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For me the most important thing educators can do for students is to help them become independent and to live lives that are rich, meaningful and connected with the community.

I love the community feel of Cranleigh School. The staff are so professional and I learn everyday from the students, parents and carers.

We have just finished writing our School Plan which focuses on improving student learning outcomes and finding useful, meaningful ways to measure progress.

We are always looking at ways we can engage with families, local residents and businesses. I invite you to become part of our community and look forward to welcoming you to our school.

This is a school that is very much also welcomed. It is an incredibly important part of that neighbourhood.

My own children attend a primary school that has disability programs. It is about integration—that is, at the primary level. And at high school, my children have attended a school where there is integration of disability programs and students with disability. It is an important step forward, I believe, to give that opportunity to those students with disability and parents who want their children in a mainstream school being able to be part of that integration.

Of course, we also need to provide other options, because there are other students and other parents who prefer, and feel that their child is better served being in, one of the specialist programs in one of the special schools. We need to understand that this is not a case of one size fits all; there are many different types of disability and there need to be available a number of different programs and venues to deliver those programs. That is where I come to talking about, as I mentioned, the challenges that we have—not just now, but ahead of us.

The ACT Greens have as one of their key education principles a belief that learning for all children is a lifelong process, fostered in both formal education and informal settings from early childhood through to adult life. This is why, when coming into the Assembly in 2008, we insisted that in the ACT Labor-Greens parliamentary agreement there was a provision for an inquiry into programs designed to close the achievement gap and address unmet needs for students with a disability. As it turned out, it was agreed that these would be split into two separate inquiries: the inquiry into the achievement gap and the inquiry into the needs of ACT students with a disability. I am pleased to say that both inquiries have now been conducted and have provided reports to the Assembly, one just in the last fortnight.

It was my fellow Greens MLA Amanda Bresnan, as the chair of the Standing Committee on Education, Training and Youth Affairs, who ran those inquiries. As I said, both inquiries have been completed, but I want to focus on the inquiry into the needs of students with a disability. As I said, the report was tabled within the last fortnight. It contains 30 recommendations around assisting teachers of students with a


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