Rural and Remote Education - NSW

Rural and Remote Education - NSW

Bourke Public Meeting, 1 March 1999 - notes

Subject choice

"I congratulate both schools, I think that they do a really good job. I would like to see a music teacher in both schools, some sort of drama course maybe in the high school and a bit more literature. Things like that I think we are lacking in."

One of the principals responded: "We would not be able to support a full time music teacher with the number of kids we have. We do have a teacher who does creative arts, he covers both the visual arts and the creative arts areas so they still get the requirements there."

"In the old days CAP [Country Areas Program] used to fund a lot of those different types of activities and, since the change in direction where CAP's coming from, those types of programs no longer run."

"Probably the only way to be able to offer a bigger range of courses for primary and secondary students in rural and isolated areas is through a different staffing formula for those areas as opposed to the city areas. It's just because we don't have the numbers of kids that we don't get the staff and the only way around that would be a different staffing formula."

"Would our children receive a better education if they went away to school? No, not necessarily better, but they would get a broader range of subjects. There is a vicious circle where we are saying we need the kids to be able to offer a better curriculum and people are saying we can't send our kids to the school because you don't have enough subjects so they send the kids away. We can't get it right. We can't continue to attract people who would otherwise go away if we don't have the curriculum."

Income support

Concern was expressed at the amount of time that it took for DETYA offices to process applications for ABSTUDY. "There are a number of kids whose money has not come through and that means that we have had to provide books, pens, pencils, uniforms and shoes for kids."

"We enrolled four kids today who came back because their money had not come through and they could not afford to stay in a hostel. This lead time with this money coming through is having a huge affect."

Concern was expressed at the difficulties experienced by Indigenous children enrolled in hostels. Late ABSTUDY payments and an enrolment system which requires reapplication each year were reported to be having a negative impact on Indigenous students.

There was also concern at the administration of ABSTUDY: "You never seem to get support from ABSTUDY. I know families who have sent three applications away in the one envelope and then two of them are lost and the other one comes back."

"My daughter went to St Ignatius to Year 6 and then to high school until Year 10 and then went away to school in Sydney. I am a sole parent now and last year I sent her $4,000 and that was for incidentals. To take advantage of all the opportunities it cost me $4,000. She is in Year 12 this year, now it will cost me the same again this year or maybe more. She comes home and she works during the holidays. She went chipping and she worked in a local store doing receipting."

"I am committed to education in this community but it is very frustrating and I live from one month to the next. I haven't got a cent saved. I get paid this Thursday and that will go out to my daughter, to my son, to paying off my home. I have got an elderly mum that lives with me and I support other extended family. It's hard. You do get very frustrated when people say if you get ABSTUDY, you get special treatment."

Concern was expressed at the impact of ABSTUDY and Austudy being means-tested. "My view is while means testing is okay there should be still some sort of locality provision so that it is at least recognised that you are not bypassing a local institution; you have no choice but to send them away. If I were living in Sydney the cost of tertiary education for my children would have been absolutely minimal compared to what it is."

"I didn't understand how frustrating the whole Austudy/ABSTUDY thing was because I was never involved in it but I had a friend of the family in tears last year and she said that she has been trying to resolve the situation about getting paid through Austudy for six months. So I started to delve into the maze of the Lismore office and it was amazing, it was like a hidden bat cave. You had to keep ringing the next number; it was like a revolving door. I think the user friendly nature of those sort of systems needs to be rationalised so frustration doesn't see a kid missing out on benefits they are entitled to."

"There are not too many organisations where you are given access to an 1800 number or a free call number that you can actually resolve an issue with. You have only got to find out who you have to ring at another number to actually get an outcome out of it."

Post-school options

"Austudy is definitely going to affect my children when they get old enough to go to university which is very soon because it cuts out at such a small wage. There are no universities here in Bourke obviously. We have to set up our children in accommodation in Sydney or Bathurst or wherever. The means test is very low when you consider the amount of money it costs us to support our children from age 18 - 22 with accommodation say $200 or more a week, plus food, just to go to university. The means test is too low as we don't have a choice. It would be different if we had a choice."

"I just wonder in terms of tertiary education how ordinary families can even consider it."

"Research been done by Charles Sturt University that shows this whole Dubbo area has got a very, very low tertiary participation rate. One of the great issues for us is that kids can't see that they have an option to go on to tertiary education and there are so few kids going through they are not providing role models back in their community. That whole issue even though it's post school it does impact back on what kids can see that they can realistically do."

"Well I think that the whole issue of whether there is work or whether there is TAFE or whether there are other post school destinations is a major factor in early leaving. If kids can actually see a pathway or a variety of pathways then you have a much better chance of keeping them on and actually getting them through to that. We have got very low tertiary participation rates. Our kids are not only disadvantaged financially, I think from the country, but they actually have to physically leave their community to go and do this and that is also a major issue for us. Not only do our kids have to leave home but they also have to leave home without the resource base to do it, without the recognition that it is a major step in both financial and social terms."

"It comes to the core of social justice that if we want the people who can't afford tertiary education to benefit from it, then we shouldn't be penalising them."

"It is frustrating, frustrating for the parents, frustrating for the kids. I have a son who is in university in Adelaide and ABSTUDY doesn't really cover all the education. If it wasn't for me and my wife he wouldn't be able to go through it because it's just not enough. He is living on the campus where he pays $75 a week for renting a place. At the end of terms he has got to wait three or four weeks before he can get ABSTUDY again. We pay his way but I am just thinking about the parents around here that haven't got that flow of money coming through all the time."

Technological support

"We have problems with our internet access at times. We also have had some reliability problems with software and things like that. It is getting better but it takes an inordinate amount of time to rectify. We have to build in an allowance of non-teaching [for one staff member] for him to maintain the system."

"The thing is that the technology is advancing that quickly that we are flat out keeping up."

"There is a service provider in Bourke which is quite good, but the department did a deal with the whole of New South Wales who went with Ozemail. Because the contract was given to Ozemail and they haven't got a Bourke point of presence, we have to go through Dubbo. We are provided financial compensation for STD calls but it is the frustration of not being able to use the service when your kids really need it. Financial compensation really goes nowhere when providing that service."

"I think a lot of it comes back to the pre-service training of the universities. That is a huge problem in that even now people coming out of university supposedly to teach, haven't got the skills."

"It seems also that schools have funding to do what they want in terms of technology training, and technology acquisition even in terms of paying someone to maintain the network. As somebody said a minute ago technology changes as soon as you blink. Who do you get to train you? Do you go for a technician because that will help you with the hardware or do you go with a teacher whose expertise may not be as good as the technician's but they know pedagogy?"

"When a computer breaks down it has to go to Dubbo and then it has to come back once it is repaired and our global budget pays for the freight there and the freight back and repairs. Whereas if we were in Dubbo we could get it done on the spot and someone could drop it off after school."

"I came to Bourke with a thing called 'Teaching Computers in the Classroom', about half a year course in my degree. I was the only one who had any of that so I copped a Year 9 class that year. I took them through to Year 12 and then got accreditation after that. Unfortunately with a small school quite often you are teaching out of your area of expertise."

"The two people we have teaching computing at the moment are very good at it. You look at the TERs required for a computing course. Those people are guaranteed a starting income of $50,000 to $60,000. Now they are not going to go into teaching unless they have a real burning desire to be a teacher."

Distance education

"If I can speak on behalf of distance education in this respect for a moment, the access to technology in terms of internet and the use of Telstra lines for kids that are beyond Bourke is almost non-existent. There is a satellite trial being conducted from Broken Hill next term, which will give a very limited ability for kids to be in constant contact with their teachers. Nevertheless, until Telstra extends the ISDN lines beyond Tottenham and Bourke the kids that are on distance education will always be at a technological disadvantage. They have the computers, they have the hardware, they have the software, and they have the teachers. We have the infrastructure at school but we do not have the telephone lines to support it. And that is an enormous disadvantage to the distance education kids."

"It is frustrating that the education infrastructure is there but the technology infrastructure isn't. If you are on a radiophone - they have trialled this in South Australia - they can run on 320 bytes per minute. It would take you about three days to download a sentence."

"More than anybody isolated kids are ready - because of their independence and responsibility - to take advantage of this technology and they can't."

"There are things about the very geographically isolated kids that are quite positive too. I think the power of the HF and VHF radio, the power of the teaching that can be done on the radio, is enormous and quite underrated."

"They are actually in great learning situations aren't they? I mean it is a great learning process. Most of the children if they go away to boarding school when they are in Year 7 you have covered that work 12 - 18 months before because it is totally one-on-one."

"One of the biggest fears of the people who do distance education is that they are worried that the kids aren't keeping up with the rest of their cohort of New South Wales. That's been proven incorrect again and again and again but nevertheless I can understand and empathise with the fears of the parents."

"From a distance education point of view I think my children benefit by doing distance education as far as being able to get the one on one attention and a personalised sort of program that suits their levels. I don't see why my children can't do as well to the best of their own ability going through Distance Education."

Student counselling

"Most high schools have a student counsellor attached to them. We have a counsellor-in-training attached to us. There is an area of need in counselling, especially in areas like this where we have a lot of problems that we have to pick up."

"Systemically we at least do get counsellors on the ground most of the time in school education. Quite often they are the only professional in that kind of area within a community. That puts on other pressures too because quite often they are taking on a much larger community role than what a normal school counsellor would."

"One of the things that we need to work on further though is identifying key people in the local community and growing them because they will stay. Rather than looking at the qualification first, we are moving to looking at the people first."

Teacher retention

"The incentive period is three years. In distance education, children just get comfortable with one teacher and then they leave. We have incentives to leave but not to stay."

"You get a locality allowance when you come out and there is subsidised rent. The incentive is that after three years you have access to a priority transfer. You get a certain number of points. We get six points per year. The incentive is a built-in incentive to leave."

"The system is currently looking at retention strategies. We are looking at how after the three years you can encourage people to stay on."

Vocational education

"We've got a very strong Western Plains Careers Advisers Association."

"We have a hospitality teacher at Bourke High School, one at Nyngan and one at Warren. There are three within a short distance of each other. But we only have one building and construction teacher and the next one is at Wellington. So when you talk about workshopping and professional development it is one-on-one. In the metropolitan areas you might have 100 building and construction teachers who can talk to each other."

"I think that every principal in the isolated areas and from the Central Schools would have to agree that the increase in Joint Schools TAFE courses since 1996 has been remarkable."

"The problem that we find in Bourke is the lack of TAFE teachers able to offer courses that the students might need. The courses that we have are really catering for the students' needs, but we could cater for more if we had more TAFE teachers."

"We have a new program starting in both Bourke and Bree as part of IESIP. The IESIP [Indigenous Education Strategic Initiatives Program] program is for Year 9 and 10 students and for students at risk and because it is Indigenous it is only for the Aboriginal students. It is an integrated program, because running parallel to that is work education and the work education is part of the Joint Schools Council with the outcome that we will have more employment at the end of Year 10, 11 or 12."

"The Dubbo District is recognised statewide as being one of the leading lights in Vocational Education and where we are seeing it best is in the rural and isolated communities because we are allowed to be flexible and allowed to be innovative."

Disability

The parent of a child with a disability spoke about her child's experience of education in Bourke.

"I'm proud of the educational community in Bourke for accepting my daughter into the school system. It has been good, but in some ways I wonder if we have greatly disadvantaged her by making her stay here.

"She has had more one on one interaction, but on the other hand it has been really difficult to get people with the skills in special education to bring her along in the areas that she needs developing, such as communication skills. Finding trained teachers in the disability field to come here to Bourke is virtually impossible. Another problem that has been a pressing one over the years has been getting equipment.

"We've been planning for two and half years for her to enter high school. Now it's the fourth week and she's still not able to access the school due to equipment not arriving in time. The modifications to the building have only just been finalised."

"Communication equipment was recommended by Special Services two years ago and that turned up two weeks before school finished last year. She could have had two years' of use of that equipment."

"Small and isolated rural communities do special education better than a lot of other places simply because of the relationship between the school, the teacher and the kid."

"With the integration of people with disabilities, more and more children with special needs will be able to access the mainstream schools. Many of these schools will have to expend a great deal of money."

Positives

"If you have the ability to achieve and you want to learn, you can learn. My daughter just did her HSC last year, she has been dux for her four years in high school and she got a TER of 91.30. Bourke may be a remote area but we have excellent teachers and excellent resources. We have got fantastic principals in both schools."

"It is an excellent area to bring up children. You can feel safe here. In Bourke they are in a safe happy environment and there is not a lot of peer pressure. So I find it is a very good background for children in a country area."

"In terms of safety of kids and those things the contrast [between urban areas and Bourke] is enormous. My daughter has gone to soccer training this afternoon and she will walk home and she will be alright. I know that in Bourke, 99% of the time, so there is that benefit for me."

Last updated 2 December 2001.