Mr Barr, Please Explain! 14 December, 2006
Posted by Emma Davidson in News.trackback
Parents from Melrose Primary and other schools the Stanhope government is closing want the Education Minister to please explain how the decision was made.
Louise Evans from the Chifley Action group, says “The Stanhope government couldn’t or wouldn’t tell us what criteria they used to earmark our schools for closure in the first place. Then they wouldn’t tell us what criteria we needed to address in our submissions to try and save our schools and now they won’t tell us how they finally decided to close our schools.
“The lack of transparency and feed back is galling.”
Louise Evans said parents and communities gave huge amounts of time and effort trying to save their schools, sweating over submissions, not knowing whether the arguments they were putting forward were the ones the government wanted to hear. “They have played us for fools. We are angry.
“We want to know how the decision was made on a school by school basis, the criteria used and the process followed.
“Minister Barr, its time for you to please explain!”
Looking at the list of schools saved and schools closing, all I can think is “why?”. There’s no explanation about specific schools or suburbs, just a general “we need to cut costs” and “we want to improve education for everyone” and “we need to address the drift to the private system”.
Well, we put up a proposal that had financial bonuses for the ACT Government (ie leasing to and then selling land to a childcare centre). We already have a great school that is inclusive of a wide range of cultures and abilities, with award-winning environment programs, community partnerships for physical education programs, and fantastic IT equipment. And we proposed to improve on that with broader art and language programs. We offered the only Woden district public school within walking distance of Chifley and Pearce families, and another P-6 option for Lyons.
And now Chifley and Pearce families are faced with public pre-schools that have only a private school within walking distance.
The government clearly didn’t want to close Melrose to cut costs, improve education outcomes, or reduce the shift to private schools.
It’s time they told us why we are losing our school.