Page 6075 - Week 14 - Thursday, 9 December 2010
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Racing) (11.52), in reply: In closing debate at the in-principle stage I would like to thank members for their support—some clearly more enthusiastic than others. It would appear that we have a new definition of legislative support from the Canberra Liberals—the bill that is “passable”. In the context of minority governments, you take the support where you can get it. I would like to thank Ms Hunter for her more genuine contribution to the passage of this legislation and for her more genuine engagement in the process.
In the context of debates around consultation, whilst I acknowledge the importance of being able to engage and thoroughly brief members in this place around legislation, it would always be my preference to err on the side of spending more time with the stakeholders and people who are directly affected by legislation. If there is a difficulty in terms of achieving the appropriate balance around consultation with those directly affected and those in this place, I think most people would err on the side of common sense and say that you should spend more time talking with people who are directly impacted by legislation rather than seeking to get political opponents who have no real interest in advancing a particular reform agenda across the line.
I acknowledge that, in the context of future national reform legislation, it would appear that the Greens are more the party of reform, and I welcome some of the comments from Ms Hunter in recognising the need for reform in the teaching profession and what this bill will facilitate. When it comes to opposing parties in Australian politics, yes, the Liberal Party is now the party of just saying no. We see this again repeated at the national and local level.
Madam Deputy Speaker, having got them a little bit excited now, I will turn to the detail of the bill. There is no doubt that education experts are in agreement that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers, and therefore, to produce the best student outcomes, it must continue to attract, retain and develop the best classroom teachers.
We have invested heavily in the teaching profession, most recently in providing support for an additional 70 teachers in ACT public school classrooms to further reduce student-teacher ratios. We have hired literacy and numeracy coordinators to help our classroom teachers to work with students who are struggling to achieve minimum national benchmarks in relation to reading, writing and mathematics.
I was very pleased with progress at yesterday’s ministerial council around the establishment of national professional standards for teachers, particularly the establishment of new highly accomplished and lead teacher classifications. The ACT has signed off on that national approach, and I hope that other jurisdictions will do so within the week. These classifications will pave the way for new career paths which will encourage our top teachers to stay in the classroom. It is all around the philosophy of letting teachers do what they do best—and that is teach. That is why we are investing to free up teachers so that they can spend less time on red tape and administration and more time in the classroom or preparing for the next day’s lessons.
Because of the work we have already done in developing our local curriculum framework, “Every chance to learn”, we are the best placed of all Australian jurisdictions to commence the introduction of the national curriculum, beginning next
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