Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to highlight and encourage the community, parents, teachers and kids of Jasper Road Public School in Baulkham Hills. In recent weeks, the school community has rallied to try and save the school’s physical disabilities support unit, which caters for children with physical and learning disabilities, including things like muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy. This unit is now under threat. In September of this year, the school found out that it may lose one of its four special classes, along with the teacher and learning support officer, owing to a drop in enrolments. The New South Wales Department of Education and Training has increased the ratio of six to 10 students per teacher to eight students per teacher. After year 6 recently graduated, numbers have fallen just short of these requirements, and urgent attention is needed.

Today we learnt in the state minibudget that New South Wales have slashed $3 billion of spending out of services. We learnt that there will be a budget deficit in this financial year of almost $1 billion, they are cutting the infrastructure building program by $890 million and, locally, there is a negative impact on my community, as tolls over the Harbour Bridge rise, raising an extra $12 million. People from my community are being asked for more and more of their tax dollars, and in return we are seeing a reduction in services, especially vital services such as this school’s physical disabilities support unit. I am pleased to say there has been a meeting with education minister Verity Firth, and the minister has agreed that they have until the end of the year to find more enrolments.

I can record here that I visited Jasper Road Public School earlier this year, and the integration of students with physical disabilities with other students is a great success. It is a wonderful working model. The benefits are immense to the children and to our society as those generations grow up. I hear that the department is looking to move away from this model. The school only received two enrolments through the department in the previous two years.

I want to commend the Parents and Citizens Association president, Anne Dunshea, on coordinating a massive effort to help save this unit. I also want to commend Mr Ross Newcombe, the concerned parent of Daniel, aged 11, who has muscular dystrophy and is in year 5. To quote Mr Newcombe on Daniel, from an article in Hills News:

He was isolated there—

at his previous school—

and looked like he was getting worse and worse. But now his reading, confidence, happiness and progress has gone up—

that is, after going to Jasper Road Public School and the disabilities support unit there. It does seem that some schools in my area are spending more and more money on upgrading facilities for disabled children, even though we have a fully functioning and equipped unit at Jasper Road Public School that is underenrolled and now under the threat of being cancelled. I call on the minister to allow common sense to prevail and allow these enrolments to proceed and save this disabilities support unit.