New policy replaces aborted plans to close 20 schools

TASMANIA'S Labor-Green government has delayed forced school closures until after the next state election.

TASMANIA'S Labor-Green government has delayed forced school closures until after the next state election and will first offer parents incentives to surrender without a fight.

The policy, announced yesterday by Education Minister and Greens leader Nick McKim, was labelled "cynical" by the Liberal opposition, which repeated its opposition to any forced closures.

Based on the recommendations of a panel chaired by construction boss Royce Fairbrother, the new policy replaces aborted plans to close 20 schools.

Those plans were dumped last July after an intense 18-day community backlash and criticism from Labor and Greens MPs, including national Greens leader Bob Brown. Mr McKim, the first Greens minister in Australia, said the new policy created a two-stream process.

The first would see incentives, to be announced in the June budget, to encourage schools to voluntarily close, merge or create "learning federations".

He conceded the second process _ preceded by reviews of school catchments, enrolments and transport subsidies _ could trigger forced closures, with no guarantee of incentive payments.

Mr McKim denied this amounted to blackmailing schools identified by last year's bungled process to either accept the money and voluntarily close or face forced closure without the cash.

"It's not a threat," Mr McKim said. "There might be schools that are not even close to qualifying under the viability assessment process that may wish to take advantage (of the incentives)."

The opposition dismissed the policy as "too cute by half" and clearly aimed at delaying forced school closures until after the state election, due in March 2014. "Today's decision is not about what's good for our schools," Liberal education spokesman Michael Ferguson said, "it's about what's politically good for

the Greens-Labor government."

Mr McKim confirmed the policy would mean no school was identified for closure before June 2014, and no school would be closed before the end of 2015.

He said this was the result of needing to get the reviews of enrolment, catchment and transport policies in place to help frame an 18-month review of school viability.

"This is not about election timing, this about respecting school communities," he said.

The government has been struggling to find a policy to deal with falling enrolments in government schools, particularly in rural areas, in the wake of a $2 billion decline in state budget revenues.

Mr McKim would not rule out removing the ability of parents to choose which state school to send their children to as part of the review of enrolment policy.

This follows concern in the Fairbrother report that parents were by-passing their neighbourhood schools, sometimes on subsidised school buses.