Page 3614 - Week 08 - Friday, 24 August 2012
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While we have great schools today, there is still work to do to ensure we have even better schools tomorrow, and the Greens are here to get the job done. The next year will hold just as many challenges and opportunities, if not more than this year. It is critical that teachers are supported to bed down the many reforms and changes that are being rolled out across the school sector and that support management in schools.
We are strong supporters of those whose voices can sometimes be lost in the debates, and we feel that there is a lot more that can be done to support vulnerable and disadvantaged students and their parents and carers to maintain positive engagement with education. We believe that everyone should have equitable access to an education that meets their needs and aspirations and gives them the skills and capacity to participate in society and that it is the responsibility of government to ensure the provision of high-quality, well-resourced and safe learning environments that are open to all students.
The Greens want an end to the gap in academic achievement associated with students’ socioeconomic status, disability and cultural background and will work collaboratively with stakeholders to ensure we do have a properly funded education system that continues to engage and provide a world-class education for all our children and young people.
In regard to Gonski, this is a significant report that has come out. What we have seen over many years is an ad hoc, piecemeal, patchwork approach to the funding of education in this country. I think it is great to have had that review and for the review to have come out with a series of recommendations about how we can put some transparency, some accountability, some logic into the funding of education right across the country. Yes, there are some issues that need close and careful attention, and we are going to need a minister and an ACT government that champions the ACT and ensures that the ACT does well out of any implementation of changes to funding.
We have had the Prime Minister’s guarantee that no school will lose any funding. We need to make sure that that is absolutely the case, regardless of whether it is a government school or a non-government school. But it is time; we have to get on; we have to reform the system. What has been in place has not been satisfactory, and I look forward to seeing the outcome of that. (Time expired.)
DR BOURKE (Ginninderra—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Corrections) (3.22): It is quite clear that Mr Doszpot does not get Gonski. He continues the scaremongering, he continues the spread of disinformation and he continues this because he has been to the Tony Abbott school of politics and he has taken those lessons as a completely uncritical student, and he keeps repeating them. It is a wonder he did not actually repeat the line spouted by Abbott that government schools were overfunded. We have not heard that line yet but I am sure we will. Goodness me!
Mr Doszpot clearly did not hear what Mr Piccoli, the New South Wales education minister and a fellow conservative, said yesterday, that the essence of Gonski is great,
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