Education, especially early childhood education, and a lower school starting age occupied much of the second day of the Tasmanian Labor Party conference in Queenstown.
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Delegates overwhelmingly rejected the government’s move to lower the school starting age for three and a half years for kinder and four and a half years for prep, and backed a proposal for the party to establish the Tasmanian Education Partnership
The arrangement would bring together education bodies, representatives from each political party, an independent Legislative Council member, and parent, workforce and industry groups to develop education policy and oversee it across changes of government.
The partnership would bind governments to the initiatives which the group endorsed and create an education pathway from kinder through to the workforce.
In his address to the conference, Opposition Leader Bryan Green pledged to the party faithful that he would move to establish the partnership if Labor won government in 2018, would re-establish pathway planners in every school, and repeal early starting age legislation.
Labor member Angela Conley, who oversees a community-run childcare centre in Cygnet, said their centre and 53 others statewide would have to close if the government introduced an earlier starting age for kinder and prep in 2020.
She said the loss of the service in her rural community would change the way that people worked, studied and socialised.
The conference wholeheartedly approved a motion for the party to see more appropriate tests conducted on students in schools instead of the standardised NAPLAN test.
A school teacher, who moved the motion, acknowledged that the test did not give an accurate picture of a child’s ability and caused unnecessary anxiety for children; some as young as eight.
The conference over the weekend to continue its support of the targeted anti-bullying program, Safe Schools, which runs out of funding next year
St Brendans Shaw student Sam Watson, 16, said the program, directed at students who questioned their gender and sexuality, was misunderstood outside of the schools in which it operated.
Sam, who identifies himself as gay, said it was a simple resource that offered training and support for both students and teachers with sex and gender issues.
“It gives students and teachers knowledge developed by the LGBTI community where they would not be otherwise able to access it,” he said.
