Rural and Remote Education - SA

Rural and Remote

Education - SA

Meeting with Principal of

Wudinna Area School, 11 August 1999 - notes

Wudinna is a small

town located on the central Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, 577 km west

of Adelaide. The population of Wudinna is 650.

Wudinna Area School

has approximately 225 students from Reception through to Year 12. The

school's catchment area extends over a distance of approximately 45 km

in a north-westerly direction through to Kopi in the south and Koongawa

in the east.

Richard Hellier,

Principal of Wudinna Area School and Chris Sidoti, Human Rights Commissioner,

Alby Jones, Co-Commissioner, and two HREOC staff were present at this

meeting.

Issues raised

In addition to the

following issues raised, Richard Hellier submitted to the Commission a

list of issues raised in consultations with students, staff and school

council, reflecting the perspective of each group on education at the

school.

Confidence in the

school

It can be difficult

to establish to the confidence of parents and the community that the service

provided by rural schools is equal to the service in the city.

"People get lots

and lots of mixed messages and many of them are inaccurate. I have taught

in the independent sector as well as the government sector and I think

there is good and bad in all sectors and good and bad in all schools.

It is difficult to make gross generalisations."

When the school analysed

the results of the PAT maths test for students Years 4-10, the students

at Wudinna Area School were above the national average, despite a myth

in the community that students were behind in maths.

"We don't get a huge

amount of coverage in the media when we want to talk about the good things

we are doing. And because of our sparse population it is difficult to

get information out. We try to do things with our website, but of course

very few in our community have access to that (Wudinna School has its

own website)."

Staff in rural schools

Rural schools often

end up with either young inexperienced staff or staff who came to the

place and never left. Wudinna has a mixture of staff.

There are benefits

in having teachers of all ages.

Staff have to be

very independent in rural schools because there is a lack of specialist

support. Training can be difficult to access.

"The number of opportunities

for training in country areas are limited. There are many, many opportunities

in the metropolitan area that are offered in evenings, just short courses,

but these are not accessible or realistic here."

It costs well over

$1,000 to go to one training course in Adelaide. The amount the school

receives for staff training and development does not cover costs realistically.

Staff feel they get

no support for training-associated costs such as travel and accommodation.

Travel costs for mandatory Area Principal's meetings are personal costs.

There are also safety

issues around travelling to other towns for training.

"When the staff are

travelling they are at risk. Last term three of my staff had accidents

because of kangaroos. Fortunately they weren't injured. But every time

they are out travelling for work they are at risk."

Living conditions

for staff

The cost of living

for teachers is high. Petrol and groceries are expensive. It is usually

a 500 km round trip to go to the local football on Saturday. There is

no pharmacy in Wudinna. Mail takes a long time. These living conditions

affect staff morale and can be a disincentive to take up employment in

Wudinna.

Wudinna is lucky

to have a daily air service (once a day).

School maintenance

There are limited

tradespeople in Wudinna. Work can be very expensive and takes a long time.

The water in Wudinna, from the Todd River, is undrinkable. The Water Authority

has increased the chlorine to combat the algae levels and now the seats

of taps disintegrate in weeks. The water pours out of the taps but you

have to wait three days for a plumber. This happens regularly.

Computer servicing

is similar. The Principal and groundsperson, the secretary and her husband

combined to install the cabling for the computer network. The principal

tried to employ someone from a company to do it at first.

"But I tried to employ

someone from a company to do that. There just isn't anyone over here.

to get someone from Adelaide, most of the companies just said no. One

of them was 'very generous' - they said they would send someone I would

have to pay $220 an hour from the moment they stepped outside their door

to the moment they got home!"

Technology

Dialling up from

home onto the internet is exceptionally slow, and you need to make three

or four calls to make a contact that stays. This is basic infrastructure

that the school can do little about. The town is lucky to have ISDN capability,

but many people in the community cannot access it at all.

The phone system

is an ancient commander system, so even this means that the school cannot

access certain services.

Range of curriculum

The range of curriculum

is perceived as a huge issue, but country schools have some advantages.

If you do not mind the mode of delivery, then in fact there is a huge

range of subjects available through Open Access. In a metropolitan school

students can only study what is on offer whereas in country schools if

they cannot offer something, at least they find a way to deliver it. Many

parents and students will refuse that offer because it is distance education.

Face to face teaching is seen as preferable.

"We have to train

our students so that they can succeed in those modes. We are talking about

that in my school with the community. My vision is that all of our Year

8 students will do a subject in distance mode, they won't do it with another

school or Open Access College. They'll do it in the school, but in distance

mode. I still have a long way to go in terms of winning people over because

of the bad press that distance mode has in people's minds. People fear

is that if they embrace it the government will say look it's so expensive

to maintain facilities in rural areas, so let's make everything distance

mode. And there is a huge distrust of the bureaucratic and political process.

Parents feel betrayed in a number of ways."

As a result people

try to solve all the problems themselves which leads to frustration.

Video conferencing

The school spent

$8,000 on picture tell video conferencing facilities at the school and

negotiated lessons with the Open Access college, especially music teachers.

This has fallen apart for the moment because service providers have said

they cannot afford to provide a service. Students were more motivated

about the lessons using picture tell. Last year students completed a retail

certificate using picture tell. A teacher was able to become accredited

through the system, and now the course can be delivered through the school.

The system is expensive.

To operate the picture tell link it costs $40 an hour, but it does work

for many students if it is maintained.

Teaching numbers

ratio

"Next year if I lose

one student, I lose 1.6 teachers because it is on a whole load of cusps.

And that's the sort of things we have to face. And the consequence on

the school is profound. Staffing-wise for many schools of this size, are

not economically very viable in terms of cost. It is very, very expensive

to educate children in these schools. I can understand that but we've

got some obligation to these communities."

It is difficult to

predict the enrolment in advance and weigh up the consequences of this

information.

School management

issues

"When it comes to

the leap into local management, and the government at the moment is giving

us that, our communities are very fearful and cynical. They are fearful

because they don't have expertise. We have to learn to buy expertise.

But we don't have an accountant in town, for example. So the first thing

parents say is that they can't manage the money because we haven't got

the expertise. They are also fearful that these are just going to be money

saving measures."

The amount of money

that a school receives for a relief teacher is not adequate considering

the real costs of paying a replacement. Wudinna received a grant to pay

for a relief teacher when a staff member went on training, but the amount

was $150 a day whereas the cheapest teacher that they could find was $240

a day.

"You get a grant,

and you control that, but it doesn't actually cover the costs. The government

says it will give you the money for something, but you don't actually

get all of it."

Workload of staff

"There is an expectation

that you participate in the community. There is an expectation that you

will take sport. All these expectations build. These are issues that are

hard. And there are certain administrative functions you have to perform

independent of size."

Some people find

this a stressful part of rural teaching.

CAP funding

The changes to CAP

funding formulae has caused great concern in the community.

In 1997 Wudinna received

$21,249 CAP funding. Under the Griffiths model it was to be reduced to

$11,197. They managed to broker a deal to make it $17,030, but this was

still a very significant drop. Ceduna had a very dramatic cut, although

the school is very isolated and experiences severe disadvantage. The communities

were very angry and actively lobbied government.

"We believe that

isolation needs to take into account a number of factors. One is isolation

from Adelaide. We accept that in South Australia, Adelaide is the main

delivery centre for service for this state. Secondly, isolation from a

large regional centre. I guess that's where the debates come - what is

a large regional centre? We would say from here, we find it very hard

to understand why Port Lincoln, and schools in Port Lincoln did, would

get a bigger per capita amount for CAP than we did. Because of course,

geographically they are further from Adelaide. They get more transfer

points if you are in Port Lincoln school, you get more money for all of

the grants that are given, but the costs are not as high. We say the model's

flawed. We don't say that people in Port Lincoln are not isolated. They

do have some problems of isolation and they do have to access some services

from Adelaide. But the situation is more complex than has been described

at the moment. We believe that there needs to be some notion of smallness

that regardless of the size there are some inherent costs."

There needs to consideration

of what services are available as well as distance, and senior service

provision.

CAP pays for the

Year 12 students' travel costs to Adelaide for a drama performance for

their studies. This is a distance cost.

The State government

has manipulated a Commonwealth grant that is designed to combat isolation

to address other issues of disadvantage because it is politically expedient.

Students with special

needs

The school currently

supports 9 students with learning difficulties, 7 students on Negotiated

Curriculum Programs and 1 reception student on reading recovery program

(a successful early intervention program at reception to Year 1).

Students on school

cards are over-represented among students with special educational needs.

Any student who comes into the school on a school card is automatically

screened for learning problems.

Last

updated 2 December 2001.