Page 1986 - Week 05 - Thursday, 3 May 2012
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The government has also recently established a Tuggeranong re-engaging youth network board which met for the first time in February 2012. The board aims to develop strategies and action plans for marginalised or disengaged youth, young people, that are aligned to ACT youth commitment objectives. Three further re-engaging youth network boards are currently being established. As I said, one is in Tuggeranong, one is being established in Belconnen and one is in Gungahlin. The chairs of these youth network boards have been appointed this week.
The purpose of these youth network boards is to bring a greater level of understanding, cooperation and coordination across all providers and agencies working to support young people who are disengaged from education and training or at risk of disengaging. The aim of this group is to develop a strategy and action plan that are aligned to the ACT youth commitment activity and to identify and communicate current pathways for re-engagement of youth and future pathway opportunities. The board will report to the Director-General of the Education and Training Directorate through the re-engaging youth leadership group. Action plans will be approved by the Director-General of the ETD or their delegate.
Another good program that has been funded through the ACT government and has been going for a quite number of years—I think 10 years now—is the SPICE program that is run by Volunteering ACT, which re-engages young people referred by schools by working in the workplace. This program attracts hundreds of young people and has a great success rate. It is another example of assisting young people between years 7 and 10 to continue with their education and not disengage before they do their year 10 certificate and then, hopefully, go on to further training or year 12. Madam Assistant Speaker, unlike those opposite, we have a real, living and responsive plan to educating our young people.
It would be unfair of me not to mention within the context of Catholic Schools Week that I was fortunate enough earlier this week to attend an important event at St Michael’s primary school in Kaleen—a breakfast, attended by Mr Doszpot and Dr Bourke. As mentioned yesterday, Mrs Dunne, Mr Seselja and Mr Coe were all there as well. I think we could have had an Assembly meeting at that place. As is usual every year—a number of us have been attending for a number of years—it was a great opportunity to share with the students, the teachers and the other staff in the Catholic education system there.
Madam Assistant Speaker, I commend our education system to you. I think the ACT can be proud of its achievements. This Labor government shares the same commitment to quality education as—(Time expired.)
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (4.31): I would like to contribute just briefly. I thank Alistair Coe for bringing this matter forward. It is a very important issue. Mr Barr wants me to finish earlier than 4.36, it seems, but I have got five minutes. Education in Canberra is a very important issue. There are a number of aspects to it and a number of those have been touched on by Mr Doszpot and Mr Coe.
I wanted to come back to the issues around the Chief Minister and her attitude to non-government schools. Whilst she jumped up and down yesterday, the facts are these.
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