Barr can't count

Mr Shab
The Government hasn’t indicated just how the assets will be actually used. We can only assume they will not be used for schooling. They say they won’t sell them off. We’ll see about that in 3-4 years time. Many schools are not really all that suitable for public service offices. The big problem with unoccupied schools is they will rapidly be covered in graffitti and have their windows broken. That won’t help building community spirit and pride! So we get back to the key point..the closures represent false savings…so what’s the point of closing them down?

Have the government stated that they are selling off the schools being closed? Or are they being mothballed?

If they’re being mothballed, or rented to community groups, where’s the problem? They can be reopened when required.

However – given the current administration’s record on such things, I’d like to see it in writing…

Again, baby boom != viable separate school. You’d need to show that the boom would create sufficient students to overwhelm or siginficantly degrade the quality of existing infrastructure, and that setting up a separate school with its own overheads would be a more efficient and effective use of public money than simply giving extra resources to existing schools to cope with the demand. You can analyse that single ABS cube all you want – you won’t find the answer there, though. It’s a complex problem, and it requires complex analysis, and some statistician from Chifley putting together a single bar graph isn’t going to cut it.

Canberra needs to get over this mentality that every citizen is entitled to a complete civic infrastructure within walking distance of every house.

Andrew was on The World Today across Australia. He said we have to close schools “for example schools were built to cater for 700 students now have 70” or something. the transcript is not yet on at http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/default.htm

Absolutely seepi! DET provides pre-schools with a building and a teacher, but the materials and equipment are provided by parents.

There is also a baby boom in the inner north. There is currently a 3 month wait to join a mothers’ group, due to the huge numbers of babies being born. Yet preschools are being closed through teh inner north as well. It surprises me that preschools are that expensive for the government. And preschools are typically a small building on a normal house block – not much to be gained seling them off.
The rest of the country is looking at ways to increase pre-school enrolments, as they are seen as very valuable for early childhood development. Populations will change over time. It seems very very short sighted to close down services due to a lull in numbers, when an increase is already on the horizon, in the larger numbers of babies being born now.

You could download the data cube and analyse it yourself. It’s from ABS: Population Estimates by Age and Sex, Australia by Geographic Classification 3235.0.55.001 issued 30 June 2006.

I think you’ll find that in a few years time, Chifley will have more than enough primary school aged children to keep the local school open.

There’s been a baby boom in the suburb now that lots of Gen X-ers have made a small dent in the mortgages they acquired in the housing bubble.

An increase in births is not the same thing as sufficient students to warrant a separate school.

All it has is the estimates at 30 June 2005. A single year’s data is meaningless. No sign of the 2000 figures used to come up with the apparent 100% increase.

At best it’s lazy. At worst it’s intentionally misleading.

Show us figures where, year-on-year, the number of 0 to 4-year-olds in Chifley is rising significantly, and you might just be able to make a case to keep the school open.

If you read the original press release on the Save Melrose and Chifley Pre-school website, the actual numbers from ABS are given in a PDF.