Save Tharwa School

From the Canberra Times:

New registration laws slammed Fears Tharwa plans will be thwarted
Elizabeth Bellamy

Tharwa Primary parents have accused the ACT Government of blocking their plans to open a private school on the site by rushing through new school registration laws.

The Government passed amendments to the ACT’s Education Act on Tuesday which make it tougher for private schools to open new campuses in the territory.

The amendments, passed 24 hours before the Government was due to announce its decision to shut 23 schools, require institutions seeking to open new campuses to undergo a rigorous accreditation process, which can take up to two years, in which they must prove sufficient demand for a new campus.

In a private submission to the Government and in meetings with Education Minister Andrew Barr, Tharwa parents flagged earlier this year plans to open a private school on the site if the current facility closed.

Tharwa Primary board chairman Karim Haddad said parents had been in talks with Blue Gum School, which, with waiting lists at its Hackett school, had been seeking a southside campus.

Tharwa parents had hoped to open a new school in the current school building next year, and had been fund-raising the $200,000 required to lease the building and pay for staff and other costs.

“[The Government has] worked it out to make it very difficult for us,” he said yesterday.

“They’ve waited until the 11th hour to change the law.

“They’ve closed the bridge on us … [and] if we lose our school, we lose our whole village.

“Nobody’s going to come here with young kids if there’s no school.” With 27 students in a school built for 50, the Government had argued the primary school’s small size made it too expensive to run, and that 64 per cent of students lived out of area.

Parents are now seeking legal advice to fight the changes.

Opposition spokeswoman for education Vicki Dunne and Greens MLA Deb Foskey say they were given very little time to inspect the amendments, handed to them on Tuesday morning after they were finalised on Friday.

They say the Government also failed to consult the Catholic Education Office or the Non-Government Schools Education Council, the peak body for ACT private schools, about the changes.

A spokesman for Dr Foskey said there appeared to be “no reason” why the amendments had been pushed through so quickly.

But a spokesman for the ACT Department of Education denied the changes were a response to Tharwa parents’ plans.

“[The amendments] weren’t aimed at anyone in particular,” he said.

The need for guidelines governing the expansion of private schools had been raised by the Association of Independent Schools of the ACT, in response to plans by Gungahlin’s Burgmann Anglican School to establish a new campus at Forde.

Consultation with the Catholic Education Office “could have occured, in a perfect world”, but the changes were minor.

Parents have also questioned the Government’s wisdom in retaining Tharwa Pre-school while the primary school closed.

However, the department spokesman said the Government had recognised the need to retain pre-schools to provide easy access to early education.

A spokeswoman for ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr said the department would be happy to meet with parents to discuss their concerns.

Hall Primary will also shut at the end of the year, while its pre-school will remain open. However, the Canberra Pre-school Society said yesterday communities should take the initiative to transform the pre-schools into early childhood community schools, expanding their year range to Year 2.

“The communities have before them a fantastic vision, even if the Stanhope Government cannot see it,” society president Carolyn Harkness said. “The parents in these communities do, as does the Canberra Pre-school Society.”

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 16th, 2006 at 11:50 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.