The Taskforce has met twice more - on Wednesday 20 and Wednesday 27 February. Here are a few points about these meetings and some other information about the work of the Taskforce:

• We spent most of the first meeting (Wednesday 20) discussing the wealth of information that we had heard from Brian Caldwell and Natalie Jackson at our previous meeting.

• At the second meeting (Wednesday 27) we heard from several more speakers:

1. Jules Carroll on Tasmania Tomorrow (the future of post year 10 education)

2. Veronica Emery and Alanna Green on middle schools

3. Sharyn Lidster on educational performance (Tasmanian, national and international data)

4. Peter White on the future plans of Housing Tasmania

• The Taskforce has organised surveys of parents of last year's Grade 6 students in this area. These surveys will provide valuable information and if you receive one of these in the mail we would urge you to take a few minutes to respond.

• There was a Teachers Focus Group on Wednesday 20 February, attended by nine teachers and run by independent consultant Janine Combes. There is one more Focus Group and that will be on Wednesday 5 March.

• The Public Workshop took place on Wednesday 20 February at 5.00pm at The Hilltop Granton. This Workshop was run by Janine Combes with some input from Taskforce members. Twenty-six members of the community came to this Workshop, including some Bridgewater High School students, and there was some very useful discussion. All participants also filled in a personal feedback sheet.

• The Educational Reference Group has now met four times and is beginning to grapple with the task of presenting possible models to the Taskforce for consideration.

• The Taskforce has now just about completed the “information gathering stage”. We must now start trying to bring everything together in a report to the Minister by the end of March.

Should you wish to ask questions about any of this or make a comment, please do so by e-mail to david.forshaw@education.tas.gov.au