Today’s Public Accounts Committee report into Improving Outcomes for Tasmanian Senior Secondary Students provides a damning assessment of the Liberals’ failing one-size-fits-all extension school policy.

Shockingly, the report found that as at the beginning of the 2025 school year, approximately 1,200 young people unlawfully did not have an approved learning plan.

The report notes that the “audit's underlying purpose was not to test whether DECYP had good project management arrangements - it was to test whether reforms were improving outcomes for senior secondary students. On that measure, the evidence provided to the Committee was substantially weaker, and in several areas absent altogether.”

As a former teacher, I believe in the power of education and recognise the merit of Years 11 and 12 extension schools in regional areas, but the Liberals’ one-size-fits-all approach is delivering more waste than outcomes.

Right to Information data obtained by Labor showed that in 2025, the Government spent close to $7 million on schools with less than five students in Year 12.

The Liberals famously promised that 75 per cent of Tasmanian students would be achieving a TCE by 2022. Today’s report found that “the Department was unable to point to specific, measurable programs designed to close that gap beyond a description of existing general processes”.

With Premier Rockliff putting Eric Abetz in charge of cutting $228 million from the education system, it’s impossible to see how things will improve.

Instead of throwing more good money after bad at the same time Eric Abetz is gutting education, the extension school program needs to be reviewed, so each community can have a place-based solution that works for them.