Mr MILLS - 2005-08-25
Yesterday, you reported on the future of indigenous education in the Northern Territory. The opposition supports the general thrust of your initiative and recognises its importance. However, nowhere in your extensive report do you mention the non-government sector. Most of our respected indigenous leaders, including those sitting across from me in this House, received a private education. In fact, about 80% of the indigenous students who graduated from Year 12 last year came from just one Top End school, Kormilda College. In the genuine interests of improving education for all Territorians, will you redraft your Indigenous Education Strategy and establish a round table discussion to include representatives from both sectors?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I welcome the question from the opposition spokesman on non-government education, because that is what he is. He refuses to acknowledge that this government, and myselfI as minister, hasve primary, first and foremost, responsibility for education in the Northern Territory, but, first and foremost, prioritymary responsibility for our government schools.
To say that non-government schools were not represented in the work we did here is an untruth. In fact, representatives of the non-government sector were present, involved themselves and participated in the workshops where we nutted out some of the thinking around our strategy going forward.
Why would the member for Blain concentrate on Kormilda College in this exercise, which is a boarding school? What we are talking about in terms of the community engagement process, overcoming the disconnect between our school based in the community and the lives lived in the community around that school, has nothing to do with boarding schools per se. It is up to Kormilda, as a private school, to engage with its community where its boarders and students come from, in the way that it sees fit.
Frankly, it would be overbearing, perhaps even bullying, for me to tell Kormilda College how theyit should conduct theirits business with those communities from which they draw their students.
Dr Lim: Talk to them.
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order, order! Members, cease interjecting, the minister is speaking.
Mr STIRLING: What we are engaged in, and what we will be engaged in, is a comprehensive and intensive effort to engage those communities that have within their boundaries community education centres. None of these 15 communities with which we are embarking on this process to engage them around fundamental and basic questions of education are boarding schools. These are schools located within the boundaries of the community. Why aren’t schools such as St John’s College, Marrara Christian School and Kormilda College, all of which were just mentioned, in this picture - they are all boarding schools? They are all boarding schools, first and foremost and, in the second case, they are non-government schools.
I am not, with all my wisdom and experience as an educator, and four years behind me as minister for Education, about to tell the non-government sector how to do its business. That is entirely up to the private sector.
What we do., and what we demand as a government in return for our funding for the non-government sector is accountability: was the funding spent and acquitted in accordance with the grants made from this government? That is not to say we do not have an interest and a partnership with the non-government sector. We do, and I work particularly closely with them.
I have enormous regard and, indeed, a friendship with Jack Mechielsen from the Christian Schools Association, whose own strategies in relation to community governance and community schooling resemble very closely what we are trying to do through the community engagement process.
I really am bemused, I suppose, by the focus of the member for Blain on the question of non-government when, clearly, there were representatives from non-government at the workshops where we worked through this.
However, as I said, they are responsible for their system. Their accountability lies with the parents of the students they teach. Our responsibility and accountability, first and foremost, lies within the government sector and that …
Mr Mills: You are the minister for the Department of Education only.
Madam SPEAKER: Order, member for Blain, cease interjecting.
Mr Mills: Well, hHe is making accusations of me that I am the spokesman for non-government education.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Blain, you are on a warning!
Mr STIRLING: Madam Speaker, shortly after being returned to government, so important and so serious to us, as a government and to me myself as minister, was this lack of really forward movement in outcomes in indigenous community schools. Tthat is why, as quickly as we were confirmed back in government, and as quickly as I was confirmed as minister for Education, I went to pulled all of this together and started working forward work on strategies to overcome that disadvantage.
I am sorry for the member for Blain that I am not down there throwing the Catholics out of Wadeye or Tiwi, or wherever I should be, taking over and telling them how to do it. I am sorry that I am not out at Kormilda or Marrara sacking those principals and saying: ‘Get out of the road, I am from the government, I am here to help, I know how to do it. This is how we should do it, get out of the road’. They have their job to do. They are a complementary and effective part of the education system in the Northern Territory. We welcome the role they play. However, what I am about is reform of the delivery and the effectiveness of the government education system to those 15 community education schools.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I welcome the question from the opposition spokesman on non-government education, because that is what he is. He refuses to acknowledge that this government, and myselfI as minister, hasve primary, first and foremost, responsibility for education in the Northern Territory, but, first and foremost, prioritymary responsibility for our government schools.
To say that non-government schools were not represented in the work we did here is an untruth. In fact, representatives of the non-government sector were present, involved themselves and participated in the workshops where we nutted out some of the thinking around our strategy going forward.
Why would the member for Blain concentrate on Kormilda College in this exercise, which is a boarding school? What we are talking about in terms of the community engagement process, overcoming the disconnect between our school based in the community and the lives lived in the community around that school, has nothing to do with boarding schools per se. It is up to Kormilda, as a private school, to engage with its community where its boarders and students come from, in the way that it sees fit.
Frankly, it would be overbearing, perhaps even bullying, for me to tell Kormilda College how theyit should conduct theirits business with those communities from which they draw their students.
Dr Lim: Talk to them.
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order, order! Members, cease interjecting, the minister is speaking.
Mr STIRLING: What we are engaged in, and what we will be engaged in, is a comprehensive and intensive effort to engage those communities that have within their boundaries community education centres. None of these 15 communities with which we are embarking on this process to engage them around fundamental and basic questions of education are boarding schools. These are schools located within the boundaries of the community. Why aren’t schools such as St John’s College, Marrara Christian School and Kormilda College, all of which were just mentioned, in this picture - they are all boarding schools? They are all boarding schools, first and foremost and, in the second case, they are non-government schools.
I am not, with all my wisdom and experience as an educator, and four years behind me as minister for Education, about to tell the non-government sector how to do its business. That is entirely up to the private sector.
What we do., and what we demand as a government in return for our funding for the non-government sector is accountability: was the funding spent and acquitted in accordance with the grants made from this government? That is not to say we do not have an interest and a partnership with the non-government sector. We do, and I work particularly closely with them.
I have enormous regard and, indeed, a friendship with Jack Mechielsen from the Christian Schools Association, whose own strategies in relation to community governance and community schooling resemble very closely what we are trying to do through the community engagement process.
I really am bemused, I suppose, by the focus of the member for Blain on the question of non-government when, clearly, there were representatives from non-government at the workshops where we worked through this.
However, as I said, they are responsible for their system. Their accountability lies with the parents of the students they teach. Our responsibility and accountability, first and foremost, lies within the government sector and that …
Mr Mills: You are the minister for the Department of Education only.
Madam SPEAKER: Order, member for Blain, cease interjecting.
Mr Mills: Well, hHe is making accusations of me that I am the spokesman for non-government education.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Blain, you are on a warning!
Mr STIRLING: Madam Speaker, shortly after being returned to government, so important and so serious to us, as a government and to me myself as minister, was this lack of really forward movement in outcomes in indigenous community schools. Tthat is why, as quickly as we were confirmed back in government, and as quickly as I was confirmed as minister for Education, I went to pulled all of this together and started working forward work on strategies to overcome that disadvantage.
I am sorry for the member for Blain that I am not down there throwing the Catholics out of Wadeye or Tiwi, or wherever I should be, taking over and telling them how to do it. I am sorry that I am not out at Kormilda or Marrara sacking those principals and saying: ‘Get out of the road, I am from the government, I am here to help, I know how to do it. This is how we should do it, get out of the road’. They have their job to do. They are a complementary and effective part of the education system in the Northern Territory. We welcome the role they play. However, what I am about is reform of the delivery and the effectiveness of the government education system to those 15 community education schools.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016