Territory Stories

Debates Day 2 - Wednesday 17 May 1995

Details:

Title

Debates Day 2 - Wednesday 17 May 1995

Other title

Parliamentary Record 10

Collection

Debates for 7th Assembly 1994 - 1997; ParliamentNT; Parliamentary Record; 7th Assembly 1994 - 1997

Date

1995-05-17

Notes

Made available by the Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory

Language

English

Subject

Debates

Publisher name

Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory

Place of publication

Darwin

File type

application/pdf

Use

Attribution International 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)

Copyright owner

Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory

License

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Parent handle

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/281696

Citation address

https://hdl.handle.net/10070/413973

Page content

DEBATES - Wednesday 17 May 1995 2000 nominations were received from all around Australia. Sarah North of Braitling Primary was the Northern Territorys primary school finalist. The Australian Scholarship Groups public relations people commented: They do not head multinational corporations or fly their executive jets or sail their yachts in the Americas Cup. These teachers are more important than that. They show your children how to use their minds. Sarah North was one such teacher. She had to be nominated by parents and students of the school for this National Excellence in Teaching Award. Certainly, the parent who nominated her had a child in her class and was only too willing to do so. The nominations honour not only their achievement but also the standard of excellence of thousands of other teachers in schools across Australia. The national finals were held on Saturday 25 March, and Sarah flew with all the other winners to Melbourne for the awards. I am very pleased to say that, at the awards, Sarah North received the honour of being named the national winner for South Australia and the Northern Territory. For her award, she received $5000 towards personal professional development and $8500-worth of computer equipment for her school. The Australian Scholarship Group came to Alice Springs and, at a presentation at the school assembly, Sarah North was acknowledged for her outstanding performance as a teacher of excellence, and the school was presented with the computer equipment. It is a great credit and honour, not only to Sarah but also to Braitling Primary School for the work of excellence that it does every day towards the education of the students. What I liked particularly about Sarah was that, when she received her award, she acknowledged the fact that she was simply one of many thousands of teachers who do this job day in and day out, but often go unrecognised for the excellent work they do. She felt that she was receiving the award, not only for herself but in honour of all those teachers who are basically unsung heroes. Last year was the first year in which this award for excellence in teaching was open to teachers throughout Australia. Because of the overwhelming response to the inaugural awards, the Australian Scholarship Group is planning to present the award again this year. Braitling Primary is an excellent school. It won the award this year for the best school effort on Clean-Up Australia Day. The trophy was donated by a local firm, Environmental Waste Management, and presented by Mr James McDonald on Monday 24 February. What happened was that 505 Braitling students spent approximately one hour on collecting rubbish in the vicinity of the school, including such areas as the shopping centre, the small park across the way and the parking areas. That amounted to 505 hours devoted to collecting rubbish. A huge quantity of rubbish was collected in big Hannons bins, bags and utilities. The students came equipped with gloves and plastic bags to collect the rubbish and they did a tremendous job. The teacher who coordinated this group is Mrs Janice Jones. She is to be commended for her interest in environmental affairs, an area to which she has dedicated much of her time over many years The activities of the students really showed that there was a great deal of rubbish in the neighbourhood that should not have been there. However, it was done in a fun way. It was not a drag for them to clean up the area. They had a great time. Numerous interesting activities were run during the day to keep them interested and there were special things they had to make. The firm that provided the trophy, Environmental Waste Management, is also responsible for the land-fill project at the Alice Springs dump. It is interesting that that is the company promoting this award. It is extremely environmentally conscious and employs a subcontractor at the local dump to provide a recycling service. I was very pleased to be at the 3326