Page 1263 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 3 April 2019
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School Sport ACT is chartered to organise representative school sport activities and programs on their behalf for all government and non-government students in the ACT. In addition to the three ACT educational sectors, School Sport ACT has the support of sector unions, parents and citizens associations and state sporting organisations.
The ACT government has funded School Sport ACT via service agreements since 2003. Currently, the ACT government provides over $350,000 annually to School Sport to deliver this valuable service. School Sport ACT currently have 122 member schools and provide sport services to over 53,000 students; 161 teachers are engaged to assist in the organisation of sporting events through School Sport ACT. They have organised and assisted over 18,000 students to participate in 74 regional and ACT events, and 727 students represented the ACT from 38 ACT representative teams in 19 sports. Twenty-one ACT students were selected to represent Australia, which is a phenomenal accomplishment for such a small jurisdiction.
I would also like to acknowledge the work of School Sport ACT, and in particular their executive officer, Ms Liz Yuen. Liz and her team have worked for many years on supporting talented young sportspeople to reach their full potential and to go on to achieve great things in their sporting lives.
Just a few weeks ago I had the chance to attend the school sport excellence awards, which is an annual event celebrating and acknowledging the achievements of ACT students who have been nominated for an award either by their school or by the School Sport ACT appointed team official. They certainly are an amazing group of young people. A group of incredible under 18s boys had to join up with some other young men from Western Australia to form a water polo team, and they went on to win the gold medal in the national championship. One young tennis player, Tallulah Farrow, is now on a full scholarship program in the United States and is playing on the US college tennis circuit. The under 12s girls’ basketball team demonstrated outstanding sportsmanship and persistence, overcoming bigger states to take out a silver medal at the School Sport Australia championship.
I also need to bring to the attention of the opposition and this Assembly that many schools already have affiliations with Sport Australia. I can advise members that, as at December 2018, 118 ACT schools had registered with the sporting schools program. This includes 74 government schools, 25 Catholic schools and 19 independent schools. To date, 107 schools have received funding to participate. The average grant is $2,800, for a total investment in the ACT of $1.7 million. This funding allows each school to purchase content from the available sport activity providers. In 2018 the most popular activities selected by schools were tennis, orienteering, touch football, athletics, basketball and gymnastics. In the last two years over 60,000 students participated in sporting schools programs.
The ACT government is continuing discussions with Sport Australia in respect of how the program may continue to develop in the future and to explore specific opportunities for ACT schools. Additionally, given my position as a member of the COAG Education Council and my participation in meetings of sport and recreation ministers, at the last sports meeting I offered to develop a short paper proposing a way
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