The fact that College and TAFE teachers in the North West and now North are demanding that the State Government abandon its post-year 10 education changes demonstrates how Labor’s core supporters are losing faith in the Premier and his ego driven ways.
It is time that David Bartlett took a deep breath and realised that it is now getting to a point where he may be forced to rollback his changes due to the damning lack of support from teachers.
If we are to minimise any further damage to the education of Tasmanian students, the logical thing for the Premier to do is to agree that no further Tasmania Tomorrow Colleges be transferred until a full independent review with full consultation with all stakeholders takes place on how to best ensure that retention, post year 10 qualifications, engagement in education and training, industry skill profiles and skill shortages can be improved.
Addressing the alarming retention and absenteeism problem in our high schools is essential, as is ensuring that children are literate and numerate before leaving Primary School, particularly in light of this year’s NAPLAN results, is essential.
The Premier’s Tasmania Tomorrow experiment is distracting the attention that should be given to address these issues. A good example of this is the Premier announcing this week that Jenny Gale Dep sec of Education, and responsible for K-10 is now going to be brought in to fix up the Shared Services mess. One wonders what the huge number of people in administration in the Polytechnic think about that. One third of the people in the Polytechnic Annual Report are shown as being responsible for administration.
Sue Napier MP Shadow Minister for Education
