Traffic safety issues not considered

According to the Government’s report (“Review of School Crossings and Traffic Issues at Schools, Child Care and Older Persons’ Facilities”, July 2004) “The ACT has one of the lowest pedestrian accident rates in the world” and “the ACT has a rate that is less than half the Australian average for the number of pedestrians killed. The report states that “one of the key reasons for this achievement is it’s relatively well planned layout with a strong road hierarchy system”.

Closing neighbourhood schools forces school children to cross major roads, breaking down the road hierarchy that makes Canberra safe. No mention of traffic safety has been made in the Government’s plan. At the consultation meeting for the South East Belconnen region the Education Department CEO, Dr Michele Bruniges admitted that safety assessments had not been done. Clearly the safety of school children was not part of the process for deciding which schools would close. This is not good enough.

Update: Published in the Canberra Times, 18th August.

Tuggeranong a shambles? Belconnen a farce

If the tuggeranong figures are a shambles then the numbers for North West Belconnen are a farce. The total number of primary school students in their North West Belconnen region in 2010 is projected to be 2515. This is for the current situation. Under the Towards 2020 proposal* it is 3089, a difference of 574. This is largely due to the students from Holt and Higgins being double counted. They have been redistributed to surrounding schools but the new West Belconnen school (P-6 initially) has also been included.

How to fix it? Let’s start with treating Belconnen as one region. Splitting Belconnen up was only ever a political ploy to make the school closures more palatable.

Here are the projected 2010 enrolments for Belconnen as given in the Towards 2020 proposal:

.          School    Status quo Proposal Difference
1       Charnwood PS        175      220         45
2           Evatt PS        140      430        290
3          Florey PS        345      480        135
4           Flynn PS        150        0       -150
5          Fraser PS        350      374         24
6         Higgins PS        190        0       -190
7            Holt PS        150        0       -150
8          Latham PS        195      310        115
9       Macgregor PS        325      350         25
10 Miles Franklin PS        370      425         55
11   Mount Rogers PS        125        0       -125
12    West Belconnen          0      500        500
13         Aranda PS        350      350          0
14           Cook PS        135        0       -135
15       Giralang PS        145        0       -145
16         Hawker PS        210      210          0
17         Kaleen PS        395      450         55
18      Macquarie PS        220      275         55
19    Maribyrnong PS        185      350        165
20 Southern Cross PS        175      110        -65
21     Weetangera PS        250      330         80

It is not clear how to remedy the numbers for Belconnen. If we assume all of Higgins and Holt go to the new West Belconnen School, plus 65 from Southern Cross, then we get 405 for West Belconnen. In the ballpark for the Towards 2020 number of 500. That leaves 125 from Mt Rogers and 150 from Flynn to be redistributed.

The Towards 2020 plan redistributes pupil numbers where they will conveniently fit, not where they might actually want to go. Just to get some idea of the situation in 2010 we will make some arbitrary assumptions about where to place the displaced students.
Starting with Flynn, their closest schools would be Charnwood, Fraser and Latham. Charnwood is not a destination of choice. To get to Latham they would have to go under Ginninderra Drive. Fraser is full already. Regardless we’ll split the Flynn kids three ways, 50 each to Charnwood, Fraser and Latham.

The obvious choices for kids who currently attend Mt Rogers would be Miles Franklin and Evatt. Miles Franklin is fairly full, so we’ll top it up with 55 kids and the other 70 we will place in Evatt.

Kaleen and Maribyrnong only have to accommodate 145 from Giralang, but they are listed as changing by 55 and 165 respectively. Perhaps someone thought they were redistributing 220 students? In any case if we assign 70 to Kaleen and 75 to Maribyrnong this is the result:

.          School    Status quo Proposal Difference
1       Charnwood PS        175      225         50
2           Evatt PS        140      210         70
3          Florey PS        345      345          0
4           Flynn PS        150        0       -150
5          Fraser PS        350      400         50
6         Higgins PS        190        0       -190
7            Holt PS        150        0       -150
8          Latham PS        195      245         50
9       Macgregor PS        325      325          0
10 Miles Franklin PS        370      425         55
11   Mount Rogers PS        125        0       -125
12    West Belconnen          0      405        405
13         Aranda PS        350      350          0
14           Cook PS        135        0       -135
15       Giralang PS        145        0       -145
16         Hawker PS        210      210          0
17         Kaleen PS        395      465         70
18      Macquarie PS        220      275         55
19    Maribyrnong PS        185      260         75
20 Southern Cross PS        175      110        -65
21     Weetangera PS        250      330         80

Which adds up to 4580 students in total for the status quo projections and the Towards 2020 proposal.

Under my scenario Evatt goes from a projected enrolment of 430 down to 210! The Department needs to release some amended figures. How can parents even hope to plan where their kids will go when the figures are so wrong?

* I chose option 2 as it is simpler to add up the numbers, otherwise I would have to make messy assumptions about how many of the year 5-8 students in the Melba middle school ended were previously in Charnwood.

Update: I think I have worked out the South East Belconnen inconsistency. Of the Cook kids 55 go to Macquarie and 80 to Weetangera (and none to Aranda … hmmm). There were 65 kids left to place from Southern Cross (going from P-6 to P-3), so they have plonked them in … wait for it .. Kaleen! Huh? I am pretty sure they have then double counted these kids and assigned them to the new P-10 super school at West Belconnen.

Government fails the test

The Stanhope Government have not only failed to learn from the school consolidation policy of the Alliance Government (“Schools approach was ill-considered”, Editorial, August 2), they have fallen well short. The earlier plan at least had extensive criteria which could be addressed. This Government has none outside of capacity figures, which they admit are wrong in many cases.

The fact that the “Government’s salesmanship of its education policy has so far been lackadaisical” is, in no small part, due to the lack of rigour in the proposal. It is tissue-thin. There are few reasons to defend it because there were few reasons behind it.

The Stanhope Government used aggressive PR tactics with distorted figures to try and capture the agenda. This has failed and demonstrated that they are not interested in the best possible outcome, merely their outcome. They have not dealt with the community in good faith.

At least the Alliance Government assigned Departmental officers to schools to assist them in making submissions. In contrast the Stanhope Government have forced parents of targeted schools to become educational experts and only belatedly released the figures which parents need to fight their case.

The campaign against the Towards 2020 proposal has been effective because it is badly flawed. They need to rip it up and start again.

Update: Published in the Canberra Times, 3rd July.