Mr DEAN - Mr Deputy President, I do not have a lot to say other than to appreciate the comments of all other members here and take that on board. I will be reiterating some of the comments made by some of those people. I think I probably should start by saying that I admire our teachers and what they are doing. I think they are doing a tremendous amount of work out there and are skilling our people in the way that they should now be skilled. I suppose you might ask why would I not admire teachers when I had a brother-in-law who retired only recently after about 40 years in the education system, and I now have a son who is a high school teacher at Reece High at Devonport, so I guess there are other reasons I should admire teachers.

When we look at the capacity of our students today and we look at their extensive knowledge base and compare it with our time, we must concede that the advancement in teaching and education in the past four decades has been nothing short of remarkable. The member for Elwick mentioned the knowledge base that they now have. When I left school, certainly I knew my times tables and I could do my times tables without a calculator, but when we now look at the breadth of knowledge that our current students have, and their research capacity, I would suggest that when I left school my ability to research was minuscule. Today students can turn to anything, they know where to go to get it, they can access it very quickly. They have that ability to do all of those things, and they are extremely confident, as the member for Elwick mentioned. Students out there today have the ability to get up to speak publicly, to address people, to take on issues that in our day and age we would have found quite difficult to do, so the confidence of these students is absolutely remarkable.

Teachers are ridiculed from time to time, and it is disappointing, for a lot of people only see a teacher for the amount of leave they take during a year, and that is upsetting and annoying because that is not how we should be gauging our teachers and their ability. We should be looking much further afield than that. When you look at the statistics in Gardner and Williamson's report, if you look at the average right across the whole year and if you look at other areas of employment, a teacher probably works longer hours in a year than many other people do in any other organisation. I think that demonstrates to us that the leave that a teacher gets is necessary and, I would suggest, in many cases if those teachers were unable to take that leave then we would probably have more cases of stress and more teachers falling apart at the end of the day.

Teachers have a tremendous responsibility. They are required now to skill our children and to skill people leaving the school area to fit into every type of employment that there is out there. They are required to ensure that children have the skills today to fit into just about any office and to work in the most mundane area, and to also work in some of the highest offices in the State and in the land, in actual fact, and to move around the world. They have that responsibility to ensure that the students have all of those necessary skills to fit into all of those areas, so it is a tremendous responsibility that these people have, and we should never forget that as well.

A teacher is not unlike a police officer. I was talking to a teacher over the weekend. They have many other roles and I tried to list some of them during this conversation. They are not just a teacher. They are a parent at times; they are a friend; they are a supporter; a guider; coaxer; clergyperson at times; medico; police officer.

Mr PRESIDENT - Do they have quotas?

Members laughing.

Mr DEAN - I would suggest that they do not take into account quotas when they are setting curriculums and so on; I would hope that was not the situation.

They are some of the responsibilities that teachers have. It is not just a matter of going into a classroom and teaching students. We also know that if all students went to school for the purpose of increasing their knowledge, of working and being good students, the work of a teacher would be so much lessened, but we know that a lot of students who go to school are challenging students and have behavioural problems. That really does test teachers to the absolute maximum in many situations.

I want to briefly refer to one example of where a teacher needs to censor students - in other words, material they bring into schools, their dress standards. I had an example given to me on the weekend of a young female student who came to school. The uniform she was wearing at the time was so short that you could see her knickers. It was upsetting for a lot of the students; however, I guess a lot of the students probably saw it differently. Comments were being made around the classroom as to the state of dress of this student, so the teacher in that instance had to intervene and speak to the student. At the end of the day the teacher had to speak to the parents of the child to identify that it really was not acceptable to send a student to school dressed in that way. The teacher at the time was new and he had to be very diplomatic about it. When he was doing this, he put it to the mother in a way that suggested the child had changed her uniform on the way to school or had put her uniform on and gone out the back door, unbeknownst to the mother. But the mother quietly and quickly interrupted him and said, 'I took the child's uniform up last night'. He was then quite staggered and then on the backfoot had to tell her that it probably was not the way to go, that she now needed to let the uniform down because it was upsetting some of the other students and was putting them off their classes.

I just use that as an example of some of the things that teachers are now required to do, some of the things that test them. It is not just a matter of teaching; it is all those other responsibilities that really make them extremely valuable people, extremely hardworking people. Teachers care; they care about their students. They want to make sure that their students get the best level of teaching possible. They want to see their students do the best they possibly can and that is also very taxing to teachers to make sure that that happens.

I notice in Gardner and Williamson's report that there is mention made of a reduction of psychological and social welfare responsibilities and some of that being taken from teachers, with other persons - further guidance officers - being placed into those positions to relieve teachers of some of those responsibilities. I would hope that that does occur quickly because that, in the interview I had at the weekend, is very time-consuming for a lot of teachers. It takes them away from a lot of their other duties and responsibilities. That is a good direction.

Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2.30 p.m.

EDUCATION REPORT

Resumed from page 28

[2.37 p.m.]
Mr DEAN (Windermere) - Mr President, I had almost concluded but there are two points I wanted to mention which have already been mentioned by another honourable member this morning, I am not quite sure who, in relation to personal development days for our teachers. They are very important days and our teachers do need to be retrained and they do need to attend these development days. I guess it gets a little annoying at times because members of the community hone in on the amount of leave that teachers are perceived to be taking and also these development days that they take off just every now and again for their own professional development. Really, it is just a little annoying I think when that occurs. Teachers are in the unfortunate position that when they do have these professional development days their class cannot attend school on that day, whereas with a police officer or somebody else in some other organisation, it is not necessary to close that organisation down to allow some professional development to take place. It is necessary and it is needed, we need to ensure that we have properly trained teachers and that they are very much up with what is happening at the time.

I wanted to recap on the comment made by the honourable member for Elwick in relation to the fact that there is some apprehension there, and I too am somewhat apprehensive with the new position that the Education department is taking. I think that apprehension comes from the fact that most of us know that when we become more innovative and changes are made, normally it necessitates more work on the part of some people. Our teachers are already over-burdened, in my view. They already have enough work to do and I would just hope that the new position that we have in relation to teaching does not impact on their ability to provide what we say they are there for and that is to teach our kids, to teach the students and ensure that they can leave school with the knowledge that is necessary to move them on to the next areas of work and employment.