Page 3693 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 23 October 2013
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700 students from preschool to year 6 and will include an environment centre, a shared school and community hall. We anticipate a 2016 opening, and this will deliver on our election commitment.
The ACT Labor government is also progressing on a commitment to support public school canteens, with the allocation of $200,000 in this year’s budget to commence this work. Last month I released the recommendations of a task force convened by government last year to examine ways to improve the viability of ACT school canteens and support them in providing healthy food and drink options. We have agreed to all of the task force recommendations and, through the budget allocation, ACT public schools will be supported to introduce online ordering systems to streamline operations and make purchasing easier for families, as part of a suite of initiatives to better support school canteens. This is something the P&C councils had been calling for, and we have delivered.
The benefit of the ACT Labor government’s investment in education is reflected in the NAPLAN results, which once again show that ACT students continue to be among the highest performing in the country. The NAPLAN 2013 summary report released last month by the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, or ACARA, shows that mean scores of ACT students were top or equal top across 17 of the 20 areas tested, relative to other jurisdictions.
The report also shows that the ACT continues to excel in reading and has been the highest performing jurisdiction in Australia every year since 2008 and significantly ahead of the national mean. It also shows that the ACT has ranked first or equal first for grammar, punctuation and numeracy in NAPLAN testing across all years since 2009. Credit must go, clearly, to principals, teachers and support staff who do an incredible job day in and day out to ensure our children are getting the best education. Through the better schools reform, we will ensure that the ACT continues to excel at a national and international level.
As minister for disability, I have the privilege of overseeing the implementation of another landmark national reform embarked on last year by a progressive federal Labor government. The national disability insurance scheme will transform the lives of thousands of Canberrans living with a disability, and I am pleased to report that this year we have made significant progress in preparing for the rollout of the NDIS. The NDIS will deliver unprecedented levels of funding and support to people with a disability. By 2019-20 we will commit—the government and the ACT—to about $342 million a year. This will replace existing funding arrangements to the disability sector around the country and represents a significant increase in funding for the ACT and will be available to more people.
This year, the transition year, we have begun the rollout of the enhanced service offer grants program, with $4.3 million already allocated in round 1 of the program. Second round applications close in a number of weeks, and I encourage all people with an interest to go online and apply if they are eligible. The ESO grants are in preparation for the national disability insurance scheme and are intended to allow people to get used to the idea of having choice of and control over the supports and services they use, a fundamental principle of the national disability insurance scheme.
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