Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do—it is the same day as my birthday, Mr Deputy Speaker! We had the Hellyer campus of the Tasmanian Academy, we had Latrobe High School, Penguin High School and Reece High School. I do thank them very much; it was a really good day.

An important thing to come out of that meeting was this: we asked, ‘Do you officially record if your students work—part-time or whatever?’ The essential answer was no. I do not know how many other schools are like this, but I think it is fairly fundamental that your school knows you are involved in the world of work. One, I would have thought it is pretty important to know your student anyway; and, two, it might be pretty important—as we enter into this almost case-managing, flexible learning mode that we are moving towards, and which is really important—to understand and recognise the skills and competencies that your students have before they get to school, particularly at the senior secondary level. That just struck me as being pretty fundamental because they are adding to the stock of the skills and competencies of your campus. Some said that they knew at the individual class level, but then you do not understand it from the generic level of the school—if you are looking at behaviour patterns of students and their work and so on. So I suppose what we are saying is that communication is at the heart of these social contracts. It is really important in terms of formal records that people have an understanding of what their students are doing outside of the classroom because it has a bearing on what happens in the classroom.

In summary, the title Adolescent overload? is followed by a question mark. I am not sure there was an overload, however. I think most students really got the balance right. They are definitely a new working class and I was really pleased that that description tends to fit the report. I thank all those who participated in this inquiry, particularly our chair, the secretary, my fellow members who took part and everyone who made submissions.

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