Joanna Gash (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Recently I had an occasion to visit Nowra Public School to view the works the school has completed as a result of funding from the government’s Investing in Our Schools program. I have to say that I was very impressed with what I saw. The funding had enabled the school to provide a first-class playground. Having been in the school previously on a number of occasions, I remember what the playground looked like before. No more rough ground. No more potholes where the children played. No more playground equipment that was falling apart. Instead, the play area was tastefully set up with sandpits and aluminium benches for the children to sit on. The trees were tastefully integrated into the area, and the playground equipment was shiny and new, with rubberised impact surfaces where the children played. This is a program that I know is appreciated by both parents and teachers, who now have an opportunity to do those things they always longed to do but for which they had no funds to realise their ambitions for their children.

I was escorted throughout the school by the school principal, Clive Robertson, who was clearly very proud of his school and his charges. Clive is an energetic and dedicated teacher who, despite his extensive qualifications, has elected to stay in the environment he really values. I could immediately see the benefits that this dedicated teacher was bringing to his school. Clive took me to see a classroom which was specifically dedicated to managing students that had been suspended—not only from his school but also from other public schools in the Nowra and Bomaderry area. I was very impressed by what I saw—impressed and proud that it was in the electorate of Gilmore that this initiative had originated.

The concept is simple but far-reaching. Instead of allowing the students to leave the school in an unsupervised environment, they are given the option of attending the special class where they get a one-on-one tuition. Many of these children have behavioural disorders brought about as a result of either a personality defect in their own make-up or the fact that they come from dysfunctional families. When they are suspended, they either go to an empty house or a house where there is conflict. Alternatively, many just go to the shopping centres and continue their dysfunctional behaviour in another setting. That does not address the problems that brought them to the suspension in the first place, and thankfully Clive Robertson’s class is addressing a desperate need. The more they are allowed to continue the pattern, the more this behaviour becomes entrenched and, before you know it, they have grown to become, as I said, dysfunctional adults themselves and potential criminals.

This program has been going for about three years, and I understand that the concept is going to be introduced into 20 other regional centres. That is a tremendous vote of confidence in the investment by Nowra Public School in this program, and I commend all those that are involved in it, especially Lorell Bird, Jenny O’Donnell and all the staff. It is their dedication to this program that makes it such a success.