One of the proposals that won Kevin Rudd many votes at last Novembers election was the promise to put every secondary student in the country in front of his or her school computer.
On winning office, Rudd adroitly discounted this offer to one computer shared by every two students.
The second round of computer distribution is proceeding, and to the horror of New South Wales parents the state government has ordered the 628 public secondary schools to decline the offer of Federal computers.
Former Treasurer Michael Costa had asked for an extension of the October 9 deadline for applications and this was declined by the Commonwealth because to agree would have seriously disrupted computer placement for the other states and territories.
New South Wales claims that it has no money to install power points to serve an influx of computers to it's ramshackle school system - and in summer the addition of computers to classrooms would generate extra heat and create a health hazard. It has no funds to air condition schools, despite this state being located in the sub-tropics.
We have the amazing situation that all the other states and territories have no difficulty in providing the power points and wiring infrastructure to bring their secondary schools into the computer age, but the children of this state are to be left lagging and subjected to a chalk and blackboard regime of teaching.
New South Wales has virtually dropped out of computer installation with the demand that it will only reconsider if the Commonwealth picks up the tab for a grant of $ 245 million to cover installation and maintenance.
This is probably the last straw for many people. The sheer incompetence of this state government has been clearly demonstrated in the shambles that describes the health system, railways and roads - and now it seems the chance of a good education for our children has gone out of the window.
There is little wonder that families are opting out of New South Wales !
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