Page 1204 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2016
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While I will not be supporting Mr Doszpot’s motion, I will be responding to his main points and those reasonable, relevant requests that are in there.
We all know that there are more students in ACT public schools. This is clearly illustrated in black and white by the most recent census data. Public school enrolments in 2016 are up by 1,747 students, as published in the 2016 Canberra schools census. That is a rise of about 4½ per cent over 2015 and represents 44,831 of the 73,467 students enrolled across all three sectors.
The ACT government welcomes student increases in public schools and aims to provide the best possible education to every child and young person living in the ACT, according to their needs. While new to the portfolio, I am genuinely impressed by the passion and commitment of teaching staff and the directorate to achieving this. As the recently appointed Greens Minister for Education I am also personally committed to ensuring equitable access to an education system that meets students’ needs and aspirations and gives them the skills and capacity to participate in society. I am also of the view that high quality, free and equitable education is a cornerstone of a healthy democracy and is fundamental to Australia’s continued prosperity.
Further I believe that it is the absolute responsibility of government to ensure the provision of high quality, well-resourced and safe learning environments that are open to all students. As we see enrolments in public schools increase it is essential to ensure that parents and carers across Canberra maintain certainty for their children’s future schooling needs and have confidence in the system.
We can provide them with this certainty, but part of Mr Doszpot’s motion seems more targeted to seeking to erode that confidence for his own ends, which is unfortunate but perhaps not surprising. It is simply not true that parents will be forced to relocate their children who are in existing schools to other areas. It is in Mr Doszpot’s motion; it is incorrect scaremongering. I know that he will say he tried to say something different in his speech but the actual words on the paper say—if I just reflect on which section of his motion it is in:
if the current enrolment trends continue, all schools in both the inner north and inner south areas will be over-subscribed and students will be forced to relocate to other areas;
Mr Doszpot asks that we note that in his motion. It is there in black and white. If that is not scaremongering, I do not know what is.
Mr Doszpot interjecting—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Doszpot, you were heard in silence.
MR RATTENBURY: Let us not go to that point of starting to scaremonger. If you want to have a genuine discussion about this, let us have a genuine discussion but let us not scaremonger in that way that is suggesting that students will need to relocate. It
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