Will Hodgman MP
Leader of the State Opposition
Monday 1 March, 2010

The Tasmanian Commissioner for Children, Paul Mason, should be assured that the Tasmanian Liberals decision to overhaul Tasmania Tomorrow is based on very well researched consultation and evidence gathered over the past eighteen months.

This involved the Shadow Minister Sue Napier spending many full days on a number of campuses over eighteen months, listening to and speaking with staff and students, as well as a huge program of communication regarding the issues that both staff and students were facing.

Mrs Napier also researched overseas models upon which the reforms were supposedly based, including a comprehensive set of briefings in New Zealand late last year.

Mr Mason would do well to actually read the policy and see that we have kept the best of Tasmania Tomorrow which is the Tasmanian Skills Institute, and turned the focus onto our middle and high schools.

The current experiment as he terms it, is a little like putting the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.  The Tasmanian Liberals will spend $22.45m reforming and investing in our High Schools, as well as ensuring that our regional and rural high schools expand their educational program responsibility to Year 12.

It also includes investing $7.5m in putting back serious career and vocational learning pathway planning into our schools through pathway planners who are invaluable in helping those very students who are at risk of dropping out of school, not attending, or disengaging from learning.

Retention and improved qualifications need this investment, rather than tacking on some ill thought out reforms at the end of Year 10 as Labor has tried.

Mr Mason will also see when he reads the policy that the Tasmanian Liberals have clearly said that social skills are just as important as literacy and numeracy.  The Tasmanian Liberals had been consulting the UTAS researchers including Professor Mulford in their ground breaking research for a number of years.