Rural and Remote Education - NSW
Rural
and Remote Education - NSW
Walgett Secondary Students
meeting, 3 March 1999 - notes
The group developed
a list of issues they wished to address. Participating students were then
split into pairs and allocated one or two of these issues. They were asked
to prepare three sub-topics.
- What is the current
situation on that issue?
- How does that
affect you and your classmates?
- How can the situation
be improved?
The students addressed
- travel
- general isolation
- choice of subjects
- Distance Education
- sport.
Travel
"Being in the country
you have to travel long distances for sporting events. The minimum travelling
time is about an hour. We play football in Moree and Bourke, so we travel
for two and a half hours."
Students reported
friends travelling for over an hour to get to school. "They come to school
tired and disadvantaged at the start of the day. It's quite a lot of time
to lose, especially homework time in the afternoon if you're getting home
at 4.30 or 5.00pm."
"We play rugby league
carnival, which is the Bourke 7s and which has been changed recently to
incorporate other towns. We've been included in that which is good so
that we don't have to travel as far."
General isolation
"Most of the educational
events occur in more heavily populated areas and therefore students sometimes
miss what would otherwise be available. For example we miss HSC seminars
and conferences and sporting events as well."
"Last year we went
down to Sydney for a Young Leaders' Conference, but that's about the only
one that we went to. We were taken down by the a teacher and had a couple
of days in Sydney."
"Money spent to travel
places is quite a lot because we are so remote. A lot of people have trouble
coming up with the money that they need."
"If you're selected
to go on an excursion and your family doesn't have the money you can get
financial assistance."
Students reported
that they had to rely on their parents for transport for extra curricular
activities.
"We've only got one
supermarket. There's no real competition for groceries. They don't always
bring in the specials. We plan trips to Dubbo and Narrabri for shopping.
There's more variety. There are different clothing shops and supermarkets."
One student reported
being isolated for 9 weeks through the 1998 floods. Students who live
on properties reported getting cut off when it rains.
"A couple of teachers
had to jump in a boat from their house to the road and leave a car out
there to come into town. In some places they had to use helicopters to
get them out."
Choice of classes
The lack of teachers
in certain areas of learning creates a lack of subject choices. "We don't
get a choice of photography or home economics. Photography was running
three years ago. It's all died down now."
"In Years 9 and 10
we've basically got two electives. They're sports science and computer
studies."
"For our Year 11
choices we've got this big list of choices but some students didn't get
any of their choices. Just due to the lack of interest in a certain subject."
"With smaller class
numbers the teachers are usually scheduled on to two classes. You have
kids teaching themselves. They might have four lessons in a week, but
will only have a teacher for two. The other two they're doing the work
by themselves."
"With the smaller
classes teachers can't be allocated a lot of time to spend with them.
For geography in Year 11, we had four lessons a week and now we've got
three and with the timetable changes it's going to be cut down to two
face to face lessons a week which is just not enough for a two-unit subject."
"I do 3-Unit Maths,
and I'm one of three kids doing it. We've got to come after school on
Mondays to do an hour's worth of work and then we do all of the rest in
the DE. I've also got a 1-Unit subject which is general studies, but I
haven't yet met my general studies teacher."
"We've got Maths
in Society, 2-Unit Maths and 3-Unit Maths in the same class with one teacher.
She's the head teacher for maths and the head teacher for computers and
the timetable coordinator. She's just running everywhere."
"When we were in
Year 10 we had to share classes with the Year 9s."
"Our teacher is trying
to teach two classes at the same time. One class normally does theory
while the other does work out of text books and we swap it around when
it's needed. We work on a contract that tells us what work we should be
doing."
"We have less teachers
because we don't have so many students and then we don't have enough subject
choices and then if we choose them we don't get them, and if we do get
them we have problems with them anyway. We have to do them by ourselves."
"We need more teachers.
We need to better our school image to stop people from sending their kids
away."
"It's just the reputation
that our school gets of not offering a good education. This is because
years ago the school had problems. But since then it's been cleared up."
Students reported
that in 1998, of 31 Year 6 students at the Catholic school, only 5 went
on to the high school in Walgett. "Many students go away for the last
two years. We started off in Year 7 with 64 students and now there are
12 students left in Year 12."
"Because the Ridge
[Lightening Ridge] has built its own high school, we've lost a lot of
student numbers."
"I really wish that
they'd think of something that they could do about it. With the senior
students it's our last year and we've got to do really well, because it's
going to be the rest of our lives that it affects. They've got a good
program running, called 10% On Top, which isolates the students that want
to go away to uni. We get a mentor teacher that we go to once a week and
we discuss the study that we do and how much. It's a push towards getting
us to study more at home. The main idea is to improve study habits and
then to improve your mark in the HSC by 10%."
Distance Education
"Anything with a
lot of practical work in it that you couldn't do by Distance Education
(DE) is not a good thing to do because there's no teachers and it's not
really something that you can teach yourself."
"It's hard to get
into doing DE when you've been in a classroom situation for three or four
years and you're thrown into teaching yourself. It's pretty hard."
"We have a lot of
DE lessons instead of face to face. It's harder to teach yourself than
have someone explain something. You've got to try and find out for yourself
if you don't know something, whereas before you used to have a teacher
to explain something to you. It's a lot harder."
"I do Related English
and I don't have a teacher. There are six of us, and we don't have a teacher.
We're scheduled into this learning centre. It's hard when there are four
other students in there doing different subjects. It's hard because there
are so many different people doing different things in the one place.
There are too many distractions."
"We've got half yearlies
in four weeks and we're still trying to get into the swing of things with
DE."
Students described
a new facility in the school, a learning centre. "Instead of having free
periods we go to a room that they've allocated and they have teacher supervision
in there. If you have a DE subject, that's where you go. So you're not
trying to allocate time for yourself for DE."
"Most Distance Education
students who live on properties full time come in for days and go into
classes to see what school's like."
Sport
"We've got a lot
of opportunities. We had three or four things we could put our names down
for."
"The older years
don't get it. It's all 15 years and down. Lots of the older kids are very
sporty and want to play sport but it's not offered."
"When you do go away
you have to drive two or three hours or more. We travel to Dubbo, Armidale
and Tamworth. We had a soccer trial yesterday and we can all go if we
want to but we have to travel to Cobar."
"Last year there
were only about 4 of us who went down to netball in Armidale for this
North West Academy thing. I got picked as a reserve. I had to have my
own transport. The AEA's supported us with money to go away."
"The people in bigger
towns have more opportunities for training. We should have training all
year round."
"We don't have a
lot of sporting opportunity. Last year we got to go to Narrabri and it
took about three or four hours in the bus. As soon as we finished the
game we had to get back on the bus to drive back to Walgett. It was such
a long trip."
"Instead of the school
going away for five hours travelling, they could encourage more teams
to come here to play sport."
"There are a few
people that really want to do well when we go away and get picked to go
further. If you're with a group of people that don't know what they're
doing - playing as a team is another thing that they really look at."
"That's why a lot
of people go away, for sporting opportunities as well as academic opportunities."
Last
updated 2 December 2001.
