Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to hear that those opposite will be supporting the Better and Fairer Schools (Information Management) Bill 2024. It is something that is long overdue, that has been a long time coming. I speak from a long time ago, when I was in classrooms and was a principal, calling for a student identifier at a state level and then supporting in this place, in 2014, the use of a unique student identifier across states, a national system. It was sorely needed in schools when I was working in them.

Let me go into the reasons why a unique student identifier was important. As someone working in a school in the government sector and working with local principals, across sectors, it was incredibly difficult in the transition period between grade 6 and year 7, when families would enrol students into schools, and then we'd get past Australia Day, 27 January would come and we'd get to the first day of school. The way the school system works is that schools are audited on student attendance and student enrolment. There are a couple of points across the first three months of the year where, if a student hasn't presented at a school or appeared there on day one of school, their enrolment can be open to question.

For particularly vulnerable children, that transition period between grade 6 and year 7 is absolutely critical. I saw figures back then where, potentially, there were 30 children between grade 6 and year 7 who failed to transition to high school in my community—30 students who just never showed up at high school. Without a unique student identifier, we couldn't say definitively that they hadn't enrolled, because they could have enrolled in a school in the other sector. They could have enrolled in a Catholic school, even though they'd put an enrolment into the state sector. We didn't have a system to check this, other than having relationships with other schools.

I could ring the local Catholic schools, the other Christian schools or the local Islamic school and ask if they had enrolled a particular child. Even when I had done those calls and could clearly say to an auditor looking at my school numbers, 'This child has not enrolled in the other sectors locally, but we are still pursuing the family. We're still knocking on their door. We're doing home visits to their last known address to try and get this transition happening,' I could be told by an auditor, 'They've probably moved to Melton.' What does 'probably' mean? We're talking about an 11-year-old child whose future is on the line in the first 30 days of high school.

We know what happens if that transition doesn't happen. That child then becomes an intermittent learner, somebody who can completely fall through the cracks. They can get to the end of year 7 and not have attended a day of school. That's a failed transition. They become a statistic as a failed transition.

So the unique student identifier in Victoria was a critical initiative that meant that we could sleep at night, knowing that we knew where each child was—that they were enrolled in a school. Although they may not have taken up the enrolment in my school, I knew that they were in another school and that another principal, another year-level coordinator and another welfare team were taking up the management of that child, which was critically important when we knew that that child was coming from a vulnerable background. It's equally important, in an era where people take children across state lines to avoid detection, that we know where those children are.

We need to know that our systems are actually working together to ensure that every child is getting the guaranteed education that is legislated in this country. This is one more way of putting that layer in place to ensure that those who are working in the system to make sure every child is educated have the supports, the processes and the systems they need. Because we can use this data, de-identified, researchers can tell us how many failed transitions there are—how many children did not show up for school this year—and we can do so without it being a guess. We will actually know and be able to set up processes to find those families and to support those families to make sure that the children do make that transition.

Education is compulsory, but when it's compulsory can vary from state to state. In Victoria, it's compulsory to 17. You are either to be in school or pursuing further training. You have to seek permission outside of that system to be employed full time. Those permissions aren't that difficult to get, but there's a process so that we know where children are, that they are continuing to be in education or training and that they haven't fallen by the wayside—so that the funding that we're putting into schools is going to the places we need it to go and so that we can capture the students that are vulnerable in terms of their attendance or in terms of their completion.

I absolutely support this bill and hope that the negotiations continue around the use of the unique identifier, that what they can be used for and what they can't be used for is sensible and that privacy is protected in the process. But the de-identification of that data can be useful for the systems we have in place—because there's an assumption: we have schools, school's compulsory and, therefore, students are attending. It's not always the case, particularly in vulnerable communities. Vulnerable students become more vulnerable at any transition point. Changing schools is a transition point where students become vulnerable. Even if there's a change of schools because of a family move, young people are vulnerable at that point to becoming what we term a 'school refuser', someone who is uncomfortable and therefore reluctant, and needs supports wrapped around them to keep them attending.

With the best will, schools can't do this work without systemic support. The unique identifier is something that I support and that I think will be of real value in communities like mine where we were given data that suggested that 30 kids had failed to transition. That's a lot of young people. That's a lot of kids not getting across to year 7 who then become vulnerable in so many ways. In communities where that kind of vulnerability exists and those failed transitions occur, we know what the end result is. The end result can often be a transition into the legal system and a transition into incarceration.

There are a lot of compelling reasons why this is a good idea. I wanted to make a contribution today to make sure that my colleagues understand what my compelling reasons are. I believe they override fears around privacy, although I still think that the ongoing negotiations between the state ministers and the federal government will see sensible provisions put in place to protect privacy. More importantly, when it was initially decided that these reforms were a good idea—it's a decision that's been bipartisan all the way through—the fears were mostly around this age group, around the school unique identifier. I commend everyone in this place to support the unique identifier and the way it will support teachers, schools, and families. Ultimately, it will support young people in their school journeys.

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