Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about a very successful event from last weekend, when the University of Newcastle held its first graduation ceremony in Port Macquarie, on the mid-North Coast. This was the result of a lot of combined work by a lot of people in the region to engage the tertiary education sector better than we have done in the past.

When I was first elected in 2008 I was quite surprised to see that around our region the secondary education providers, the vocational providers and the universities, both public and private, did not talk to each other, so we pulled together the Port Macquarie-Hastings Education and Skills Forum, which now has 20 people who meet regularly. They are driving improvements in regional pathways for aspiring students from our area quite strongly, and we are starting to bear fruit. The graduation on the weekend saw the 100th nursing student graduate in their home town, having done the course entirely on their home patch. We saw the first business-law and arts graduates go through, having studied in their home town of Port Macquarie. The cherry on the cake was that a regional student learning by distance was successful in receiving the university medal. This was an important occasion. The acting chancellor, the vice-chancellor and many others from the University of Newcastle made the bus trip up the coast to participate in the graduation ceremony.

This is the start of an education and skills strategy for our regional area. We have put a lot of work into it. It is now a coordinated strategy with links across the vocational and tertiary sectors and the public and private sectors. It is timely in providing answers for many universities that are grappling with how to better engage regional areas on the back of the Bradley review. We believe we have taken ourselves from an area that was a follower in education, with an uptake of students going on to higher and tertiary education of only 12 per cent, to one that is now a proud regional leader in providing pathways. This work will continue.