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Rural and Remote Education - NSW

Rural

and Remote Education - NSW

Moree Public Meeting, 4 March

1999 - notes

Participants were

two parents (one from Moree East Primary School P&C and the other from

Pallamallawa Primary), a member of the NSW Teachers' Federation and a

representative of the Education Department.

Moree East Primary

School

"I think Moree East

is a great school. I have no complaints. I'm involved very much with the

P&C. Our major problem is getting parent involvement with the P&C - getting

the parent community involved in the school through fund-raising and awareness

raising. We've only 4 or 5 parents. We haven't got the number to draw

on for fund-raising. That's a resource issue.

"The school is very

good on computers. They've just linked up all their computers. They're

all up-to-date with internet access. The kids have weekly lessons and

use the computers regularly.

"The teachers are

wonderful up there. They're very interested in the kids and they keep

them busy all the time. They put a lot of their own time and effort into

activities, performances, activities at lunchtime such as sport and the

computer club.

"The classes at the

moment are fairly small. There are some composite classes. There's a Year

3 and also a Year 3-4.

"The school doesn't

charge any fees. The P&C have a voluntary contribution. Only about one-third

pay it. We raise about $500 for the school that way."

Country Area Program

"The Country Area

Program for isolated schools is designed to offset the lack of cultural

opportunities in smaller towns. It used to have a cultural component where

the money only went to sending cultural tours to isolated schools. That's

changed and the schools are given the money now rather than on an application

basis. So the schools are given all the money now. Moree East is a disadvantaged

school but not an isolated school. It's more common now that the Country

Area Program is used for literacy and those kinds of program. Schools

have to be really accountable now for the money they spend and show an

outcome. You can't really show an outcome if you spend your money on cultural

things."

Pallamallawa Primary

School

"I'm very happy with

Palli. It's only a very small school - only 84 students this year. I'm

quite happy with the standards and we have a much better parent body.

The composite classes work very well because they're only two grades.

We have the internet and have for quite a while. The kids use it and there

are TAFE courses taught there after hours including adult learning using

the school computers.

"I'm also happy with

Warialda High School which is another small school. It goes from Year

7 right through to Year 12. I'd like to improve their subject choices.

My child in Year 9 wanted to take Commerce this year but there weren't

enough kids to do it. Instead she had to take Drama or Music. I'd much

prefer her to take Commerce. My eldest child in Year 9 did come to Moree

(30km from Palli) for school in Year 7 and one term of Year 8 and I wasn't

happy so I took her the other way to Warialda (50km). We have a bus run

either way so I took that option.

"Last year we had

11 Year 6 students at Palli: 3 went to Warialda High, 3 went to Courallie

(in Moree), 1 went away to boarding school and 4 went to Moree High. Out

at Palli about 60% of the school or Uni leavers are back on the properties;

40% would be off doing some other career. When Dad's ready to retire they

come back and take over."

Indigenous education

"Part of the problem

is that the Aboriginal parents don't understand what is required of the

students. There needs to be something in place to assist them in understanding

what education is about for their children and where they should go with

it. That's a parents education program that needs to be in place. Because

their schooling was so different they don't know what their children are

required to do.

"We perhaps need

more Aboriginal teachers. Not simply Aboriginal students attending teachers'

college and being sent wherever. That doesn't seem to be working. A lot

of Aboriginal teachers don't seem to survive as well outside of their

own community. Perhaps there could be something put in place that would

see them going back to their own community and even training within their

own community. That might encourage more Aboriginal people to become teachers.

"We've had quite

a bit of success with AEAs training to be teachers."

CITEP - Community-based

Indigenous Teacher Education Program - is now running at Boggabilla. "There

is slow growth and it is very positive."

"The recognition

of Aboriginal English as a dialect is very important in these schools

up here. The Aboriginal language program goes from Goodooga, Lightening

Ridge, Walgett, (not Coonamble), Boggabilla, Toomelah, Mungindi and Moree.

Brother John is responsible for the training. With the Toomelah elders

such as Rose Fernando and Ted Fields, he's written a textbook which has

just been printed. That's a powerful base to bring back some of that pride

and knowledge of yourself."

The 2-day induction

by Aboriginal Education Assistants, Aboriginal teachers and elders conducted

this year for new teachers in the district was said to be very successful.

The job prospects

for Aboriginal people, however, are almost negligible in towns like Moree.

There are a few jobs in some government offices and some schools.

Technology

"All rural schools

have an internet account. Depending on the quality of the ISDN line. In

this area, because of the heavy demand by the cotton industry on international

traffic, there's quite a few macro links in the major towns. So the quality

of the lines is very good. Further west the lines are a little frail but

they are being upgraded. Every school has one link at the moment and some

have multiple points. By the end of this year every public school in NSW

will have an E-mail access for all principals, internet and a school intranet.

We should 1,100 schools hooked up by June and the other half by the end

of the year. The internet provider is Ozemail and every school is paid

to link up to the provider in Sydney. Internet usage in schools is increasing

at 1000% per month."

"The money that schools

get to compensate them for STD calls is very generous and in the Dubbo

district it covers the calls quite adequately. No-one needs to dig deeper

to pay for the STD costs."

"Student usage depends

a lot on how much access the kids have at home."

"A lot of programs

now come out on CD-Rom, too, which gives you the same research tools as

the internet but without the STD connection costs. The latest computer

roll-out put may 50 with CD players in the larger school, 20 in medium

schools and 10 in the smaller schools. At Copper Creek School with 18

students there are more computers than children. They've all got CD-Rom

capacity."

"Each school by May

1999 will have 2 E-mail accounts - one for the principal and one for the

administration to create a Statewide school network. There'll be 6,000

accounts Statewide with a central E-mail server, a browser and a roaming

facility."

"At Moree East every

teacher has a computer with intranet. Every classroom has a computer -

usually a colour Macintosh. They can use the IMACs in the computer lab

as well." "Moree East has implemented its own optic fibre network. Teachers

load in their student assessment data which goes onto a central file which

the Principal can access. At the beginning of each year every student

is benchmarked."

"That's where computers

in schools falls down, though. There's a lot of staff who are reluctant

to let the students use it because they're not computer literate themselves.

Kids know more than they do in a lot of areas."

"To address this

the department has introduced the TILT training program: Technology in

Learning and Teaching. This is the fourth year. When it first started

it was very hard to get teachers to participate. In 1999 we have 80 places

across the Moree District over 6 months. It's a four-day commitment. More

than 100 have wanted to participate."

"There are places

where there's a lack of casual teachers to mind the classes while the

teachers go and do their training and development." "When a teacher takes

time off for training and other in-service, it gets a lot of parents offside.

The kids are dealing with too many different faces and it's really disruptive."

Incentive transfers

"As far as incentives

go, the Federation is concerned about the lack of incentives not only

to get people to come out to the rural areas but also to get people to

stay. The Coalition put forward a proposition that experienced teachers

could be paid 10% of their salary to go and stay in country areas on a

contract for three years. I don't feel that would work. They'd lose at

least half of that in tax bringing it down to about $2,500. You're disrupting

your family, worrying about what to do with your house in Sydney, finding

accommodation in the bush - it just isn't practical. What about removal

expenses? You need something more than that.

"Once they do get

out here and stay, there comes a time - say after 24 or 25 years - when

they do want to move back to the coast or back to the city but they find

they're stuck out here. That is preventing people from wanting to come

out because they don't want to get stuck here. There's a shortage of positions

back on the coast because they're filled up with incentive transfers and

nominated transfers. If they're not in an incentive school then their

chances of getting back to the coast are very limited."

"Bingara and Warialda

are not incentive transfer schools. Some isolated schools like Lightening

Ridge a teacher only has to stay 2 years (8 point schools) whereas in

Walgett, for example, it's a 6 point school where the teacher has to stay

3 years."

"The current program

in place is because of the difficulty in getting people to come out here.

It's an attraction program. Now we're having difficulties getting people

to stay. So now we have to devise a retention program. There are ways

of doing it: such as additional superannuation points or a payment at

the end of two years."

"Rent is a problem,

too. Teacher housing goes on the market value in the town. In a place

like Mungindi a teacher can be paying a much, much higher rent than someone

over on the coast. The cotton industry pushes the rents up."

"They pay $180 for

a 2-bedroom flat."

"I think, too, the

problem with living out further is when you haven't got time to go and

seek a doctor. When the time is allowed, you might not be able to get

an appointment. For a doctor's appointment it can take two weeks; two

years for a dentist. If you're someone with a young family, who do you

get to take your child 100 km to a specialist when you're supposed to

be teaching?"

"We have an incentive

package for Principals which is conditional on the first round of applicants

being inadequate. With the permission of the Minister we can offer a salary

one step above that for the school, use of a car for three years and some

free kilometres for each year, and free rent. The package is negotiable

and the components can be mixed up to suit the person's needs."

Other issues for

teachers

"Probably our big

issue is casuals. We feel you can't really attract casual, particularly

to the small outlying schools. They have to drive 200 km a day or even

further to get to the school, do four hours of work and drive back again.

With most casual work you get paid more if you're a casual. With teaching

it's the opposite. You get $10,000 less as a casual teacher per year.

They don't get paid travel time or petrol. And if you're only there four

hours you don't even get recess."

"There are fewer

teachers being trained, fewer teachers and hence fewer casual teachers."

Moree inter-agency

co-operation

"A community development

is the Moree Place Management project. This project has grown out of a

need for a more co-operative approach to deliver government services better.

It's different flavour is that it's involved also with local government

and the business community as well as government agencies: police, juvenile

justice, TAFE, health system, DOCS, housing all made a commitment to contribute

$10,000 a year for three years. As well as that the shire council is contributing

about $30,000 including the car. It employs a Place Manager to develop

ownership and pride in the community. It tries to deal with some of the

problems with youth lawlessness in some precincts.

Last

updated 2 December 2001.