❓ The Minister for Education and Training defends the government's plan to spend $25 million on behaviour management and discipline in WA schools as part of the enterprise bargaining agreement offer to teachers, highlighting the success of existing programs and the need to extend them to primary schools.
AnsweredQoN 1050Legislative Assembly
QuestionView source ↗
Can the minister advise the House why he is planning to spend $25 million on behaviour management and discipline in Western Australian schools as part of the Government’s enterprise bargaining agreement offer to teachers? Mr A.J. CARPENTER
AnswerView source ↗
I thank the member for the question and for her interest in educational issues in her electorate. Behaviour management and discipline is a very important area in schools, and there has been a great deal of success so far with the program that has been implemented into our high schools. An amount of $28 million was applied to the behaviour management and discipline approach in a number of government high schools which were deemed to be most in need of assistance in managing behavioural and discipline issues. By and large, the results in those schools have been outstanding - the educational environment has improved considerably for all students and, importantly, staff. Dr G.I. Gallop: Most importantly, for teachers. Mr A.J. CARPENTER: Yes. One of the issues that is constantly at the forefront of the attention of teachers is the working environment, the workload, the issues they have to deal with when coming into the school, and often socially-impacted issues. The ability of schools to access additional resources for behaviour management and discipline to implement their own locally developed strategies has been warmly welcomed. In the run up to this EBA I made it clear that I believed the success of the program so far was a clear indication that we needed to extend it both into high schools and, importantly, into primary schools. We have successfully reduced class sizes in years 1 to 3 in primary schools from 28 to 24, which required something like 350 additional teachers. We have done that this year. There are still issues affecting years 4, 5, 6 and 7. The maximum class size for those years is still 32. The behaviour management and discipline initiative allows schools, if they so desire, to reduce class sizes so that they can use resources in the way they think best fits their issues. The offer we have before the State School Teachers Union of WA at the moment is $25 million, which will allow the behaviour management and discipline strategy to be extended into 200 primary schools and an additional 30 secondary schools, taking to 74 the number of secondary schools. This is a very important initiative. I am firmly of the belief that this is a more preferable approach than the uniform reduction in class sizes across the board, because it targets the resources where they are most needed. If, for example, a class of 32 contains four students with particularly high needs, we do not achieve a lot by reducing the class size to 30 if those four students with particularly high needs remain, but the behaviour management and discipline approach allows us to work comprehensively with those four individual students and ameliorate the situation for everybody. The situation in our government schools is much improved with behaviour management and discipline. Years 8 and 9 were the critical years to start off with, and we are now looking at the primary schools. Just to give an indication of the success of this program, under the previous Government suspensions in government schools reached 12 000 students. We have successfully reduced that figure by 34 per cent, which is a very significant improvement. I am confident that when this and other initiatives that are before the Teachers Union at the moment are placed before the broader teaching community, they will be warmly embraced and accepted and will lead to a continued improvement in the outcomes and educational environments in all government schools. We have turned the corner.
Mr A.J. CARPENTER replied: I thank the member for the question and for her interest in educational issues in her electorate. Behaviour management and discipline is a very important area in schools, and there has been a great deal of success so far with the program that has been implemented into our high schools. An amount of $28 million was applied to the behaviour management and discipline approach in a number of government high schools which were deemed to be most in need of assistance in managing behavioural and discipline issues. By and large, the results in those schools have been outstanding - the educational environment has improved considerably for all students and, importantly, staff. Dr G.I. Gallop: Most importantly, for teachers. Mr A.J. CARPENTER: Yes. One of the issues that is constantly at the forefront of the attention of teachers is the working environment, the workload, the issues they have to deal with when coming into the school, and often socially-impacted issues. The ability of schools to access additional resources for behaviour management and discipline to implement their own locally developed strategies has been warmly welcomed. In the run up to this EBA I made it clear that I believed the success of the program so far was a clear indication that we needed to extend it both into high schools and, importantly, into primary schools. We have successfully reduced class sizes in years 1 to 3 in primary schools from 28 to 24, which required something like 350 additional teachers. We have done that this year. There are still issues affecting years 4, 5, 6 and 7. The maximum class size for those years is still 32. The behaviour management and discipline initiative allows schools, if they so desire, to reduce class sizes so that they can use resources in the way they think best fits their issues. The offer we have before the State School Teachers Union of WA at the moment is $25 million, which will allow the behaviour management and discipline strategy to be extended into 200 primary schools and an additional 30 secondary schools, taking to 74 the number of secondary schools. This is a very important initiative. I am firmly of the belief that this is a more preferable approach than the uniform reduction in class sizes across the board, because it targets the resources where they are most needed. If, for example, a class of 32 contains four students with particularly high needs, we do not achieve a lot by reducing the class size to 30 if those four students with particularly high needs remain, but the behaviour management and discipline approach allows us to work comprehensively with those four individual students and ameliorate the situation for everybody. The situation in our government schools is much improved with behaviour management and discipline. Years 8 and 9 were the critical years to start off with, and we are now looking at the primary schools. Just to give an indication of the success of this program, under the previous Government suspensions in government schools reached 12 000 students. We have successfully reduced that figure by 34 per cent, which is a very significant improvement. I am confident that when this and other initiatives that are before the Teachers Union at the moment are placed before the broader teaching community, they will be warmly embraced and accepted and will lead to a continued improvement in the outcomes and educational environments in all government schools. We have turned the corner.
I thank the member for the question and for her interest in educational issues in her electorate. Behaviour management and discipline is a very important area in schools, and there has been a great deal of success so far with the program that has been implemented into our high schools. An amount of $28 million was applied to the behaviour management and discipline approach in a number of government high schools which were deemed to be most in need of assistance in managing behavioural and discipline issues. By and large, the results in those schools have been outstanding - the educational environment has improved considerably for all students and, importantly, staff. Dr G.I. Gallop: Most importantly, for teachers. Mr A.J. CARPENTER: Yes. One of the issues that is constantly at the forefront of the attention of teachers is the working environment, the workload, the issues they have to deal with when coming into the school, and often socially-impacted issues. The ability of schools to access additional resources for behaviour management and discipline to implement their own locally developed strategies has been warmly welcomed. In the run up to this EBA I made it clear that I believed the success of the program so far was a clear indication that we needed to extend it both into high schools and, importantly, into primary schools. We have successfully reduced class sizes in years 1 to 3 in primary schools from 28 to 24, which required something like 350 additional teachers. We have done that this year. There are still issues affecting years 4, 5, 6 and 7. The maximum class size for those years is still 32. The behaviour management and discipline initiative allows schools, if they so desire, to reduce class sizes so that they can use resources in the way they think best fits their issues. The offer we have before the State School Teachers Union of WA at the moment is $25 million, which will allow the behaviour management and discipline strategy to be extended into 200 primary schools and an additional 30 secondary schools, taking to 74 the number of secondary schools. This is a very important initiative. I am firmly of the belief that this is a more preferable approach than the uniform reduction in class sizes across the board, because it targets the resources where they are most needed. If, for example, a class of 32 contains four students with particularly high needs, we do not achieve a lot by reducing the class size to 30 if those four students with particularly high needs remain, but the behaviour management and discipline approach allows us to work comprehensively with those four individual students and ameliorate the situation for everybody. The situation in our government schools is much improved with behaviour management and discipline. Years 8 and 9 were the critical years to start off with, and we are now looking at the primary schools. Just to give an indication of the success of this program, under the previous Government suspensions in government schools reached 12 000 students. We have successfully reduced that figure by 34 per cent, which is a very significant improvement. I am confident that when this and other initiatives that are before the Teachers Union at the moment are placed before the broader teaching community, they will be warmly embraced and accepted and will lead to a continued improvement in the outcomes and educational environments in all government schools. We have turned the corner.
Dr G.I. Gallop: Most importantly, for teachers. Mr A.J. CARPENTER: Yes. One of the issues that is constantly at the forefront of the attention of teachers is the working environment, the workload, the issues they have to deal with when coming into the school, and often socially-impacted issues. The ability of schools to access additional resources for behaviour management and discipline to implement their own locally developed strategies has been warmly welcomed. In the run up to this EBA I made it clear that I believed the success of the program so far was a clear indication that we needed to extend it both into high schools and, importantly, into primary schools. We have successfully reduced class sizes in years 1 to 3 in primary schools from 28 to 24, which required something like 350 additional teachers. We have done that this year. There are still issues affecting years 4, 5, 6 and 7. The maximum class size for those years is still 32. The behaviour management and discipline initiative allows schools, if they so desire, to reduce class sizes so that they can use resources in the way they think best fits their issues. The offer we have before the State School Teachers Union of WA at the moment is $25 million, which will allow the behaviour management and discipline strategy to be extended into 200 primary schools and an additional 30 secondary schools, taking to 74 the number of secondary schools. This is a very important initiative. I am firmly of the belief that this is a more preferable approach than the uniform reduction in class sizes across the board, because it targets the resources where they are most needed. If, for example, a class of 32 contains four students with particularly high needs, we do not achieve a lot by reducing the class size to 30 if those four students with particularly high needs remain, but the behaviour management and discipline approach allows us to work comprehensively with those four individual students and ameliorate the situation for everybody. The situation in our government schools is much improved with behaviour management and discipline. Years 8 and 9 were the critical years to start off with, and we are now looking at the primary schools. Just to give an indication of the success of this program, under the previous Government suspensions in government schools reached 12 000 students. We have successfully reduced that figure by 34 per cent, which is a very significant improvement. I am confident that when this and other initiatives that are before the Teachers Union at the moment are placed before the broader teaching community, they will be warmly embraced and accepted and will lead to a continued improvement in the outcomes and educational environments in all government schools. We have turned the corner.
Mr A.J. CARPENTER: Yes. One of the issues that is constantly at the forefront of the attention of teachers is the working environment, the workload, the issues they have to deal with when coming into the school, and often socially-impacted issues. The ability of schools to access additional resources for behaviour management and discipline to implement their own locally developed strategies has been warmly welcomed. In the run up to this EBA I made it clear that I believed the success of the program so far was a clear indication that we needed to extend it both into high schools and, importantly, into primary schools. We have successfully reduced class sizes in years 1 to 3 in primary schools from 28 to 24, which required something like 350 additional teachers. We have done that this year. There are still issues affecting years 4, 5, 6 and 7. The maximum class size for those years is still 32. The behaviour management and discipline initiative allows schools, if they so desire, to reduce class sizes so that they can use resources in the way they think best fits their issues. The offer we have before the State School Teachers Union of WA at the moment is $25 million, which will allow the behaviour management and discipline strategy to be extended into 200 primary schools and an additional 30 secondary schools, taking to 74 the number of secondary schools. This is a very important initiative. I am firmly of the belief that this is a more preferable approach than the uniform reduction in class sizes across the board, because it targets the resources where they are most needed. If, for example, a class of 32 contains four students with particularly high needs, we do not achieve a lot by reducing the class size to 30 if those four students with particularly high needs remain, but the behaviour management and discipline approach allows us to work comprehensively with those four individual students and ameliorate the situation for everybody. The situation in our government schools is much improved with behaviour management and discipline. Years 8 and 9 were the critical years to start off with, and we are now looking at the primary schools. Just to give an indication of the success of this program, under the previous Government suspensions in government schools reached 12 000 students. We have successfully reduced that figure by 34 per cent, which is a very significant improvement. I am confident that when this and other initiatives that are before the Teachers Union at the moment are placed before the broader teaching community, they will be warmly embraced and accepted and will lead to a continued improvement in the outcomes and educational environments in all government schools. We have turned the corner.
Mr A.J. CARPENTER replied: I thank the member for the question and for her interest in educational issues in her electorate. Behaviour management and discipline is a very important area in schools, and there has been a great deal of success so far with the program that has been implemented into our high schools. An amount of $28 million was applied to the behaviour management and discipline approach in a number of government high schools which were deemed to be most in need of assistance in managing behavioural and discipline issues. By and large, the results in those schools have been outstanding - the educational environment has improved considerably for all students and, importantly, staff. Dr G.I. Gallop: Most importantly, for teachers. Mr A.J. CARPENTER: Yes. One of the issues that is constantly at the forefront of the attention of teachers is the working environment, the workload, the issues they have to deal with when coming into the school, and often socially-impacted issues. The ability of schools to access additional resources for behaviour management and discipline to implement their own locally developed strategies has been warmly welcomed. In the run up to this EBA I made it clear that I believed the success of the program so far was a clear indication that we needed to extend it both into high schools and, importantly, into primary schools. We have successfully reduced class sizes in years 1 to 3 in primary schools from 28 to 24, which required something like 350 additional teachers. We have done that this year. There are still issues affecting years 4, 5, 6 and 7. The maximum class size for those years is still 32. The behaviour management and discipline initiative allows schools, if they so desire, to reduce class sizes so that they can use resources in the way they think best fits their issues. The offer we have before the State School Teachers Union of WA at the moment is $25 million, which will allow the behaviour management and discipline strategy to be extended into 200 primary schools and an additional 30 secondary schools, taking to 74 the number of secondary schools. This is a very important initiative. I am firmly of the belief that this is a more preferable approach than the uniform reduction in class sizes across the board, because it targets the resources where they are most needed. If, for example, a class of 32 contains four students with particularly high needs, we do not achieve a lot by reducing the class size to 30 if those four students with particularly high needs remain, but the behaviour management and discipline approach allows us to work comprehensively with those four individual students and ameliorate the situation for everybody. The situation in our government schools is much improved with behaviour management and discipline. Years 8 and 9 were the critical years to start off with, and we are now looking at the primary schools. Just to give an indication of the success of this program, under the previous Government suspensions in government schools reached 12 000 students. We have successfully reduced that figure by 34 per cent, which is a very significant improvement. I am confident that when this and other initiatives that are before the Teachers Union at the moment are placed before the broader teaching community, they will be warmly embraced and accepted and will lead to a continued improvement in the outcomes and educational environments in all government schools. We have turned the corner.
I thank the member for the question and for her interest in educational issues in her electorate. Behaviour management and discipline is a very important area in schools, and there has been a great deal of success so far with the program that has been implemented into our high schools. An amount of $28 million was applied to the behaviour management and discipline approach in a number of government high schools which were deemed to be most in need of assistance in managing behavioural and discipline issues. By and large, the results in those schools have been outstanding - the educational environment has improved considerably for all students and, importantly, staff. Dr G.I. Gallop: Most importantly, for teachers. Mr A.J. CARPENTER: Yes. One of the issues that is constantly at the forefront of the attention of teachers is the working environment, the workload, the issues they have to deal with when coming into the school, and often socially-impacted issues. The ability of schools to access additional resources for behaviour management and discipline to implement their own locally developed strategies has been warmly welcomed. In the run up to this EBA I made it clear that I believed the success of the program so far was a clear indication that we needed to extend it both into high schools and, importantly, into primary schools. We have successfully reduced class sizes in years 1 to 3 in primary schools from 28 to 24, which required something like 350 additional teachers. We have done that this year. There are still issues affecting years 4, 5, 6 and 7. The maximum class size for those years is still 32. The behaviour management and discipline initiative allows schools, if they so desire, to reduce class sizes so that they can use resources in the way they think best fits their issues. The offer we have before the State School Teachers Union of WA at the moment is $25 million, which will allow the behaviour management and discipline strategy to be extended into 200 primary schools and an additional 30 secondary schools, taking to 74 the number of secondary schools. This is a very important initiative. I am firmly of the belief that this is a more preferable approach than the uniform reduction in class sizes across the board, because it targets the resources where they are most needed. If, for example, a class of 32 contains four students with particularly high needs, we do not achieve a lot by reducing the class size to 30 if those four students with particularly high needs remain, but the behaviour management and discipline approach allows us to work comprehensively with those four individual students and ameliorate the situation for everybody. The situation in our government schools is much improved with behaviour management and discipline. Years 8 and 9 were the critical years to start off with, and we are now looking at the primary schools. Just to give an indication of the success of this program, under the previous Government suspensions in government schools reached 12 000 students. We have successfully reduced that figure by 34 per cent, which is a very significant improvement. I am confident that when this and other initiatives that are before the Teachers Union at the moment are placed before the broader teaching community, they will be warmly embraced and accepted and will lead to a continued improvement in the outcomes and educational environments in all government schools. We have turned the corner.
Dr G.I. Gallop: Most importantly, for teachers. Mr A.J. CARPENTER: Yes. One of the issues that is constantly at the forefront of the attention of teachers is the working environment, the workload, the issues they have to deal with when coming into the school, and often socially-impacted issues. The ability of schools to access additional resources for behaviour management and discipline to implement their own locally developed strategies has been warmly welcomed. In the run up to this EBA I made it clear that I believed the success of the program so far was a clear indication that we needed to extend it both into high schools and, importantly, into primary schools. We have successfully reduced class sizes in years 1 to 3 in primary schools from 28 to 24, which required something like 350 additional teachers. We have done that this year. There are still issues affecting years 4, 5, 6 and 7. The maximum class size for those years is still 32. The behaviour management and discipline initiative allows schools, if they so desire, to reduce class sizes so that they can use resources in the way they think best fits their issues. The offer we have before the State School Teachers Union of WA at the moment is $25 million, which will allow the behaviour management and discipline strategy to be extended into 200 primary schools and an additional 30 secondary schools, taking to 74 the number of secondary schools. This is a very important initiative. I am firmly of the belief that this is a more preferable approach than the uniform reduction in class sizes across the board, because it targets the resources where they are most needed. If, for example, a class of 32 contains four students with particularly high needs, we do not achieve a lot by reducing the class size to 30 if those four students with particularly high needs remain, but the behaviour management and discipline approach allows us to work comprehensively with those four individual students and ameliorate the situation for everybody. The situation in our government schools is much improved with behaviour management and discipline. Years 8 and 9 were the critical years to start off with, and we are now looking at the primary schools. Just to give an indication of the success of this program, under the previous Government suspensions in government schools reached 12 000 students. We have successfully reduced that figure by 34 per cent, which is a very significant improvement. I am confident that when this and other initiatives that are before the Teachers Union at the moment are placed before the broader teaching community, they will be warmly embraced and accepted and will lead to a continued improvement in the outcomes and educational environments in all government schools. We have turned the corner.
Mr A.J. CARPENTER: Yes. One of the issues that is constantly at the forefront of the attention of teachers is the working environment, the workload, the issues they have to deal with when coming into the school, and often socially-impacted issues. The ability of schools to access additional resources for behaviour management and discipline to implement their own locally developed strategies has been warmly welcomed. In the run up to this EBA I made it clear that I believed the success of the program so far was a clear indication that we needed to extend it both into high schools and, importantly, into primary schools. We have successfully reduced class sizes in years 1 to 3 in primary schools from 28 to 24, which required something like 350 additional teachers. We have done that this year. There are still issues affecting years 4, 5, 6 and 7. The maximum class size for those years is still 32. The behaviour management and discipline initiative allows schools, if they so desire, to reduce class sizes so that they can use resources in the way they think best fits their issues. The offer we have before the State School Teachers Union of WA at the moment is $25 million, which will allow the behaviour management and discipline strategy to be extended into 200 primary schools and an additional 30 secondary schools, taking to 74 the number of secondary schools. This is a very important initiative. I am firmly of the belief that this is a more preferable approach than the uniform reduction in class sizes across the board, because it targets the resources where they are most needed. If, for example, a class of 32 contains four students with particularly high needs, we do not achieve a lot by reducing the class size to 30 if those four students with particularly high needs remain, but the behaviour management and discipline approach allows us to work comprehensively with those four individual students and ameliorate the situation for everybody. The situation in our government schools is much improved with behaviour management and discipline. Years 8 and 9 were the critical years to start off with, and we are now looking at the primary schools. Just to give an indication of the success of this program, under the previous Government suspensions in government schools reached 12 000 students. We have successfully reduced that figure by 34 per cent, which is a very significant improvement. I am confident that when this and other initiatives that are before the Teachers Union at the moment are placed before the broader teaching community, they will be warmly embraced and accepted and will lead to a continued improvement in the outcomes and educational environments in all government schools. We have turned the corner.
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