Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to continue the speech in which I was so rudely interrupted in quorum calls today by the silly opposition in this parliament. I think it is really a bad thing for the opposition to play political games when backbenchers are trying to make their contribution to the House. It is very disrespectful to the House and to the people of Australia. I want to continue on the schools assistance legislation and why it is so important to Tasmania.

I particularly want to talk about the importance of small schools in country areas. I was talking about how technology has improved the opportunities for small country schools and how they have so many opportunities for both classwork and the extras such as sport, music and other activities. In Tasmania, where a cluster system has worked quite well in the past, many of these schools interact on sports days—football matches, hockey and netball, all with the strong involvement of parents, teachers and the local community. There is a growing body of evidence that small schools can and do deliver comprehensive education.

The assumption used in Tasmania to justify small schools' closures—the economies of scale argument often advanced—is that reduction of expenditure per pupil would translate into greater public pupil achievement because the money saved could be invested in school improvement. However, where there have been closures in other countries, there is no evidence to support this finding. There is, in fact, a growing body of research that, far from seeking to defend the retention of small schools, actually seeks to examine the success of small schools. In general this research points to the human scale of small schools, the satisfied and willing cohort of pupils, socially independent school leavers transferring to post-primary schools, committed teachers, the opportunity for parents to exercise choice of school that numbers of small schools typically afford, relative autonomy and distance from bureaucracy, excellent responses to the local community and a good school-pupil and school-family match.

Financial concerns taken in isolation might present a potential argument for some in favour of the amalgamation or closure of small schools, but it is important that such argument be counterbalanced by other considerations such as the adverse effect of children being bussed to different environments; the sociological importance of rural schools in the community; its role in the preservation of memories of local families and local history, culture, folklore; its significance in the pride of the town; and the attachment of the people to the school. There is also the small business effect: who is going to deliver the newspapers and who is going to run errands around the local shop? Who is around to pack groceries in the store on school holidays? In Tasmania these tend to be done by secondary school students. Many who come from country towns will return at weekend to that town if their childhood links are there. As mentioned previously, small schools can assist in change—not only changes in education but also changes in their communities—that can be just as good as economic drivers.

To get back to the bill before the parliament, the national curriculum provides an advantage to these small schools because once again they can be part of the national scheme by providing education, as they are now linked to almost anywhere in the world. Rounding up a pile of small schools into one is not going to improve their educational outcomes. It will merely remove the driving force of the community and lose its direction and pride. With the huge investment that Labor has put into schools it has become possible to change the face of education. In the new funding rounds government will oversee the rollout of the first phase of the $69.1 million Empowering Local Schools initiative to a thousand schools in 2012 and 2013, giving school communities more say in decision making. I hope we might be able to obtain and use some of that money to allow Lyons' small schools to develop their future sustainability and ensure their continuation. (Time expired)

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