Page 2397 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ms Burch, resume your seat, please. Mr Doszpot, I will warn you next time you interject. Ms Burch and the rest of the members here heard you in silence when you were speaking, I believe, so will you please pay the same respect.
MS BURCH: There was also a mention of bullying. Bullying, unfortunately, does exist. It happens in our community; it would happen in our schools. We have 40,000-plus students in our government schools and around 30,000 students in non-government schools. ETD has a very strong and clear policy around managing poor behaviours, including bullying at schools. Again, all those policies are on the website and I encourage Mr Doszpot to have a look at them.
There was mention of NAPLAN. I agree with you on this one, Mr Doszpot: it is not the only test or indicator that families, schools and students should be looking to. It is one test. It is a consistent test. I am a supporter of NAPLAN but I also understand that the best thing that a parent can do—that families can do—is actually to go to the school and talk to the school executive when they are considering what school their children can go to.
Mr Doszpot also made mention of professional learning opportunities for teachers across the ACT and made an inference that there were not many opportunities for professional development. I would like to table a list from TQI on the opportunities for professional development. I table the following paper:
2014 Register of Accredited Professional Learning Programs, dated 11 August 2014.
Mr Doszpot may want to visit, again, another informative website that clearly, for those who can see, has quite an extensive list of opportunities for professional development.
I have made mention of the financial commitment to public education. I have also made mention of our financial commitment to non-government schools. We on this side of the chamber understood the elements of the national education reform agenda and the need to have student-based funding. We committed to six years funding to government schools and non-government schools and it is the federal Liberal government that has torn up that contract. That will fund only four years.
It has also been raised in this place about what the independents and Catholic schools think of that. I can tell you quite explicitly that the Catholic schools write to me and talk to me and say they are devastated and ask me to continue to fight for years 5 and 6 funding that the federal government has torn up and thrown out. So if Mr Doszpot wants to do something useful, I would say: please go to your federal counterparts and argue on behalf of the ACT Catholic education system and have the federal government honour the years 5 and 6 commitment in the NERA agreement.
On training initiatives, this budget also continues a focus on the government’s strategic initiatives to improve the vocational education and training system’s
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