The Taskforce met for a third time on Wednesday 16 January. Here are a few points about that meeting:

• Three of the four local councils in our area presented their view of the future for the whole sub-region.

• Siobhan Gaskell, Director of the State Library of Tasmania, talked to us about lifelong learning and introduced Pip Hankin who described the operation and success of the Huon LINC (Learning and Information Network Centre) project.

• Mark Sayer, General Manager of Skills Tasmania, gave a presentation about participation in the workforce.

• We were given details of the plans for the Focus Groups. Basically 73 members of our community have been selected at random and have been invited to participate in discussions about the future of education in the area. There will be five Focus Groups between 31 January and 5 March and they will be run by an independent consultant, Janine Combes. There will be a sixth session for randomly selected teachers from our area.

• In addition to these Focus Groups it was decided to have a Public Workshop for up to 100 people. We are still working on details of this workshop but we hope to have an independent consultant run this for us and it will probably happen in mid to late February. More details on all of this soon.

• The next meeting of the Taskforce will be with Brian Caldwell, an educator with an international reputation, on Thursday 7 February.