Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a member of the Standing Committee on Education and Training, I rise to speak on the tabling motion of the report put forward by the committee entitled Adolescent overload? I see the member for Cunningham, the chair of the committee, here. It was a pleasure working with her on this particular report. It is an important report that goes to all of our desires to see that our children and students in Australian schools get the best possible education they can.

It is probably relevant that this report—Adolescent overload?is tabled this week. My son is on his schoolies week down in the south-west of Western Australia at the moment. If he is listening: please do not overload, Jarrad; take note of this report. It is an important report that investigates how students are coping with combining school and work. For a lot of them, obviously, the school year is over, but it was interesting to discover that Australia is one of only a few countries with a high proportion of students who take outside work. The others in the OECD include the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Denmark. I know that this affects many young people within my electorate of Swan; I have over 65 schools in my electorate, which makes it fairly school oriented, and a lot of people will be taking interest in this report.

The inquiry was conducted with a healthy degree of consultation. There were 13 public hearings across the country: seven in Canberra and one each in Adelaide, Perth, Burnie, Melbourne, Brisbane and Port Kembla. Importantly, the public hearings took evidence from the students themselves. I am pleased to say that 2,765 students completed the online survey of which 1,722 were engaged in some form of work outside school. So this report is based on plenty of evidence from a decent investigation, and I thank the committee secretariat in particular for facilitating it.

Statistics provided to the department of education show that in 2007 the proportion of students aged between 15 and 19 who were working was 37 per cent. That breaks down into 31 per cent of males and 42 per cent of females. The survey revealed that almost half of young people were employed in retail with another third in the fast food or hospitality sectors.

The report identified a number of overlapping reasons for this. One is the desire to earn money. During the committee’s student forums, a primary reason given for working was to save money, and the biggest priority was buying a car. I am sure many of the students also used it to pay their mobile bills as well. Another reason was the quest for financial independence, or increased personal autonomy. A girl from Perth noted that it was good to not have to ask her parents for money all the time; it was her money and she could do what she wanted with it. Other students maintained that their early experience in the workplace would help their job prospects after study. For a small proportion of students, working was cited as a means to providing greater financial security for the family. It is a pity that in a country like this students feel they have to work to help support their family.

The report also considered the positive and negative aspects of part-time work. Positive aspects for students included enhancing confidence and self-esteem, contributing to financial wellbeing, facilitating the development of social networks, gaining useful knowledge and independence in exercising greater responsibility and self-reliance, instilling a work effort and attitude, and developing work and organisational skills, including time management skills.

The report noted that many young people managed to successfully fit in work with study. A study by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research in 2001 suggested that 63.2 per cent of students found balancing the two not too hard, but at the same time it was interesting to see that a lot of the students who were in the middle socioeconomic class went from working really hard in year 11 to finishing work at the end of year 11 in order to concentrate on their studies in year 12. However, there comes a point when too many hours make life too difficult. An LSA research report in 2003 showed that males who work five to 15 hours per week during year 12 are 40 per cent less likely to complete year 12 than those who do not.

Part of the report concentrates on the confusion students have as to how many hours they should be working. Some students said that they received conflicting advice from their parents, who encouraged them to go out and get a job, and their teachers, who encouraged them to concentrate more on their studies. It was interesting to note that some of the students did not want their teachers to know that they were working; they felt it was their own lives and they kept it apart from their school. Particular responsibility lies with parents and schools to provide good advice in this instance. The survey responses showed that a large majority of students with part-time jobs believe that working impacts on the amount of time they have available for study.

The report contains a number of recommendations, most of which call for some further research or action from the Australian government. Recommendation 2 is:

That the Australian Government develop and implement a national generic skills passport for secondary students to document the employability skills they develop through activities undertaken outside school. These activities should encompass paid and unpaid work (including community/volunteer activities and work for the family business), sporting and recreational activities and other life experiences.

It is important that the skills that students pick up are properly recognised. As an ex-employer, I know that it is not always easy to judge someone’s readiness to work or their employability. If this recognition of previous experience were graded, it would give the employer more tools to make a better employee choice.

One of the highlights of the inquiry for me was the visit to Adelaide, to the Para Hills High School, to talk to the students and some of the parents there. I also talked to Shandell and Nikita, former students who went back to the school that day, and to people from a variety of other schools represented there—Smithfield Plains High School, Craigmore High School, Salisbury High School and one student from Paralowie R-12 School. There were some TAFE directors there as well, so it was a well-organised forum.

Another highlight for me was at Leeming Senior High School in my state of Western Australia, where I caught up with Mr Steve Wright, who I see around my electorate a bit. It was good to catch up with him. It was also interesting to see the representative from Hungry Jack’s there, the traineeship manager. It gave her an opportunity to hear from young people who work in Hungry Jack’s. The buffer between the workers and the traineeship manager was obvious, because the traineeship manager was not aware of some of the information that came out from the students because it had not been getting back to her through the manager. It was good to have those people there, particularly the Commissioner for Children and Young People; her senior policy officer; Louise Atherton; and people from the Department of Education.

Another highlight for me was the student forum in Canberra, which I thought was really good. We got some great feedback from students, particularly looking at some of the problems with not their knowing their rights in the workplace. My son, who has recently started some employment, had not even considered thinking about what his rights were or how much he should be paid, but I gave him some ideas on that. It is an important issue for students to be aware of.

As we all know, the education of our students is imperative, and we need to make sure that this report has an influence on that. As I go around towards the end of the year doing school visits, as I know a lot of the members here do, I always try and tell the students—and I give the same advice to my son—not to be afraid to seek the truth. There are a lot of people who will give you impressions on both sides of arguments, and young people should make sure that they always seek the truth. I see the member for Gippsland is here. I know of his particular interest in youth education and youth allowance. I am sure he will talk about that during his speech.

In conclusion, this report has provided some useful information from students on their interaction with the working world. It will be a useful tool for students and parents across the country and should be considered by the government. I commend the report.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—I thank the chamber for granting me leave to make additional comments on this report by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, Adolescent overload? Report of the inquiry into combining school and work: supporting successful youth transitions. I had a short opportunity to address the report when it was presented in parliament last week but, given that that was only five minutes, I want to take the opportunity in this chamber to add some more to those comments. I thank the member for Swan for his contribution to the debate and his enthusiastic and reliable participation in the committee. Often these committees survive on a couple of members who take the role seriously and engage, and he most certainly did that, as did other members who have addressed this report. I appreciated that.

I took the opportunity in the five minutes I had in the main chamber to thank the committee members and to thank the secretariat—and I acknowledge Dr Glenn Worthington is with us today in another capacity—whose work was fantastically important. That was particularly so in this case because, when we took on the reference from the minister to look at this transition from when young people are able to take on paid employment, generally from around the age of 15, to when they progress out of school into work or further study, and to look at the impact on that transition—particularly given that we have got a huge focus on increasing retention rates in schools—we knew we had a large roundtable at the beginning of the year with, I think, over 50 peak organisations from the education sector, the community sector, the trade union sector, all the academics, to talk about this issue, but we felt very strongly that we wanted to hear from young people. With all due respect, we did not want to hear just from people who sit on youth bodies; we wanted to dig down to the young people who were actually out in these workplaces doing this work and hear about their experiences. If members have a close look at the report, they will see it is full of the voices of young people, and I think that that was a particularly important aspect of the report.

We sought to do that by, firstly, the usual process of public hearings. We had 13 public hearings around the country and, as the member for Swan indicated, we had large forums at a number of secondary schools to which we invited all the neighbouring schools. We tried to cover all the states. We did Para Hills High School in South Australia, Leeming Senior High School in Western Australia, the Tasmanian Academy Hellyer campus in Tasmania, the Holmesglen Vocational College in Victoria, Craigslea State High School in Queensland and Illawarra Senior College in New South Wales. So we heard from a lot of students, their parents and their teachers at those forums.

But, in addition, I think the most important and significant innovation was that we established an online student survey. We wrote to all high schools inviting them to let young people know that the survey was available and that we were interested in hearing about their experiences and views. The response was that 2,765 young people actually took the opportunity to complete the survey and provide us with their views. That was particularly important, I believe, because when we came to the point of making recommendations in the report we did not want to take a paternalistic, adult view of what was best for these young people. We wanted to make sure that the actions of government supported and reflected the views of those young people, and I think that is what we have achieved.

It is important to note—and other speakers, including the member for Swan, have identified—that young people are much more involved in part-time work than when many of us were that age. I will not cast aspersions on the room by trying to calculate how long ago that may have been! Certainly, I know from my own personal experience that at the age of 15, like many, I was desperate to get out and get a casual job and have some money that I could decide how to spend. But in those days there was only ever probably one late-night shopping night in most states and on Saturdays shops stayed open till about two o’clock at the latest. So, on average, students who had a casual job could not work more than eight to 10 hours, because they were the only hours outside normal operational hours that were available to students.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The other members may have had more horse-and-cart driven experiences, I understand! However, I was a mere check-out chick at Coles at the time. The reality for young people at the time that I first experienced work was that it was a fairly manageable and a tremendously positive experience.

Now, of course, as we know, the nature of work is very deregulated. Working in the retail industry is a full weekend, and we heard from students who worked two eight-hour shifts, on Saturday and Sunday, on a weekend. Then there is the fast food industry. I remember the first KFC when I was a kid and what an extraordinary thing it was. It certainly was not open every night of the week. But now in the fast food industry there are multiple sites in every town which are open seven nights a week, often until midnight, and they are staffed by, by and large, school-age students.

What we are seeing is a significant increase in the number of young people engaged in part-time work while they are in school, but most importantly, and what we heard a great deal of from young people, was that the nature of that work is also different. We should acknowledge that it was the view of nearly everybody who submitted that public policy has in some ways been blind to this development in our society; that young people working is a very common Australian experience for whatever reason, perhaps because we do not have cheap entry level labour from neighbouring countries that comes here to work in the ways that perhaps America and parts of Europe experience. We have had a long tradition of relying on our young people under the age of 18-19 to fill those gaps in the workforce. I think both the economy and young people and their families have gained great benefits from that.

However, the expansion of, not only the number of hours, but also the hours at which young people are working is an issue that I think public policy now needs to pay attention to. Given that these young people are not legally adults—they are in transition to adulthood—we have a responsibility above and beyond what we have to normal employees and students, to make sure that they are treated well. That is what this report attempts to go to in addressing it.

Many speakers have talked about the variety of reasons that students gave us about why they work. It is important we understand why young people decide to work. Many of the media interviews I have done since we tabled the report contain a bit of a snide comment that young people are just a materialist generation—they all just want mobile phones and designer brand clothing. Well, to be honest with you, what has changed? Certainly, when I was young, I was not working primarily for the love of it, I was working for some independent money and I think that is a good thing. Young people decide that they want those additional things in their life. Many of them said, ‘I do not want to be constantly badgering mum and dad for the money for those additional items such as mobile phones or new clothing’ or, indeed, for their social life, to be constantly asking for money to go to the movies or whatever. They like the fact that they can support themselves in that way. I think that is commendable and we should recognise it and not in any way downgrade that aspiration.

We heard, clearly, parents saying to them to go out and get a job. The vast majority of parents reflect the fact that they like young people to be earning a bit of income, to be learning some responsibility and to be starting the transition to adulthood in the workplace. A lot of young people however did say that they thought their school was perhaps not quite as supportive, that the school tended to have a view that if work was a problem, give it up—the priority should be school. Many of the young people agreed that their education was the priority, however, work was very important to them.

We should also recognise that many young people said, ‘Yes, I am working for money, obviously; I am not out there doing it for the love of it’ but they were very able to identify lots of other benefits that they got from that experience of work. Many of them talked about the social networks, the employment networks, the importance of their CV when they go out to look for work after school, having had that work experience. We should acknowledge that opinion was expressed by young people who aspired to work after school and those who aspired to go on to further study. Many of them knew that when they left school and looked for a part-time job at 18 they were less attractive to employers compared to the 15-year-olds out there in the market. But if they were an existing employee—if they had already worked for that organisation for a couple of years while they were at school—they were more likely to be kept on. They were very canny, I have to say, in their assessment of the work market and the opportunities and the benefits they were getting from their casual jobs. As an example, there was a student at the forum in the Illawarra Senior College at Port Kembla and he said that he liked the workplace because it was like a second family.

Many students reflected that they really liked the fact that they were meeting adults and young people from outside their immediate school and family circle and that they were learning to interact with the broader population in a way that gave them skills. In fact many of them said that the part-time job was actually an escape, that they liked feeling competent and in charge in the job and able to do the tasks that were set them—perhaps compared to struggling through the academic studies of the senior years and trying to keep on top of all of that. They had a real sense of pride in what they were doing. It is important to understand that they really value their jobs, and that is reflected in the fact that many of them make other sacrifices in their lives to keep them. They may give up sport or even time with friends because they want to keep their job and they value the experience they get from it.

The important thing to take from the feedback from young people is that they had the view that it was a positive experience. They did not want government to take actions that would downgrade the value of what they were doing. We heard very strongly from them that they did not want us to regulate. Many students said to us, ‘If you limit the number of hours I can work I may well give up school to do the job, not the other way around.’ We tried to respect those views. The one area I suppose we did struggle with a little was the late hours. We heard of students working at fast food outlets where the shift was supposed to finish at 10 pm who had a rush of customers at the last minute, the outlet did not actually shut until 11 pm and then they had to clean up. Being a parent who has sat in a car outside one of those places I can well understand the frustration that causes. They get home at midnight and then try to do homework, get up early in the morning to do it or take a day off school the next day to try and catch up. So there are implications around that.

The committee took the view that the best way to progress this is to do what we can to get the community to engage in a conversation about this aspect of our young people’s life experiences and about our responsibilities as the parents, teachers and employers in their lives to make sure that there is a positive outcome. We put recommendations in place that are more educative than regulatory, in an attempt to get a broader consensus of responsibility in the community and to support these young people.

It is important to note—and the member for Swan highlighted this—that the number of young people we talked to who had no idea about their rights and protections in the workplace was quite shocking. We were particularly concerned that many of them reflected that they could not simply say no. They used terms like ‘guilt trip’ quite consistently. They would say that they had indicated to their employer that they were available to do one eight-hour shift each week, but someone else would not be available so they would get a phone call. Many of them take their mobiles to school and leave them on so that their employers can ring them to come in at the last minute. That is how they end up doing excessive hours, beyond what they should be doing. Regularly, over and over again, out of an overdeveloped sense of responsibility they said, ‘Oh, no—I can’t say no to the boss. They really rely on me’, and their capacity to say, ‘I appreciate your dilemma, but tonight I’ve got an assignment due. I cannot do an additional shift,’ was, sadly, not very commonly shown. We saw a lot of young people who because of their sense of responsibility could not say no—or, sadly, many of them reflected that if they say no they do not get any more shifts. That was a less common problem but it was still there.

We have endorsed things under Fair Work Australia such as the youth liaison officer and the toolkit that is being developed to provide young people with information. I would like to recommend to members of the chamber that they take the opportunity to look at this report and particularly to look at the words of the young people who have put in a lot of time on this. They deserve respect for the effort they also have put into the report.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I join the debate in relation to this report of the Standing Committee on Education and Training on adolescent overload. I have had the opportunity to read through the report over the past 48 hours and I commend it. Although I am not a member of the committee I am particularly interested in education issues as they affect regional areas. I commend the member for Swan, who has already spoken on the report, and the member for Cunningham for her very thoughtful and common-sense presentation of the issues. I understand the member for Braddon will make a contribution as well.

The foreword by the member for Cunningham is quite illustrative. Any members who are interested in the issue should have a look at the foreword and the recommendations in particular. I just want to quote from the foreword, where the member for Cunningham refers to the fact that:

There are considerable positive benefits for students who combine school and work. Those who find the right balance are not only rewarded with a range of social and economic benefits, but their chances of a successful transition into further education, training or work are significantly enhanced.

That particular paragraph really picks up the theme of the member’s contribution here today that overwhelmingly there are many positive aspects for students who have part-time and casual work but it is tough to find that balance. It is almost impossible, I believe, for any government at state or federal level to make hard and fast rules in that regard, such as rules or regulations which would require students to work a maximum number of hours per week. It simply will not work. The students themselves would not cop that type of system. They do need that flexibility and some students, as I said, will cope better than others.

But there is one area that I am not sure the report covered in any detail. It relates to the issue of seasonal work undertaken by students. In my community, which has a very significant tourism industry, I believe we have an emerging problem with students between years, in that six- or eight-week break that they might get in their senior levels of schooling, where they pour a lot of hours into casual work in our community. It goes beyond casual work. Some of these students are doing 40- and 60-hour weeks at a time when having a break may be in their best interests.

Finding that balance is a really tough issue that I think the report addresses. I think it is a very significant social and economic issue and public policy has not necessarily kept up with the changes, as the member for Cunningham correctly identified. We have in Gippsland in particular, and in a lot of regional communities, a real challenge to keep our students at school. Finding a way to balance that opportunity for them to get some part-time work and get some independence but then maintain their studies is a critical issue for us in regional areas. The Gippsland region has one of the worst education retention rates in Victoria. Compared to a state and metropolitan rate in excess of 80 per cent in 2006, just 65 per cent of Gippsland students finished year 12. These figures naturally translate into a lower participation rate for Gippsland students in university and higher education. I have spoken in the House on that topic many times in the past and I am sure I will again in the future, particularly as we refer to issues surrounding student income support as we go forward.

The report acknowledges the changing nature of the casual and part-time employment workforce in Australia. As the member for Cunningham referred to, some of us are a little bit older. I can refer to my very distant youth riding to work in Sale. I was actually a Woolworths checkout boy and a bag packer at the end of the line there, and the big promotion I got was to go to the fruit and veggie section for the second half of my term as a casual employee. The member was right that employment in those days for students was based around Thursday nights, Friday nights and Saturday mornings, and that was the full extent of it. They were the only hours that were available anyway and I thought that was probably a reasonable balance. It was about 12 hours a week. As a student attending years 10, 11 and 12 you could maintain that workload and there were enormous benefits, I believe, for students in having that type of part-time work.

Now, with the longer operating hours that members have referred to, the longer shifts and the huge increase in the prevalence of fast food outlets, there are far more hours available to students. There is increasing demand, particularly in regional areas, where we have an older population, for some of these businesses to seek a younger market—and, let us be honest, the students are paid a lower rate than more mature workers and there are some economic benefits for the businesses themselves. I think they need to handle that issue with a great deal of responsibility going forward and I will refer to that a little bit later on. There is one other area. Of course, in rural and regional areas it is sometimes difficult for students to access part-time work as well, which I am sure some of the students have raised in their contributions to the inquiry.

Having said that, there are over 260,000 young Australians who are combining school and work at any given time. It is my personal view that part-time employment is incredibly important for young people. In fact, I have four young children. When they get to that age I will be encouraging them to get out there and get a part-time job because I think it develops some very healthy habits for young people. They develop a work ethic and learn new skills. I think one of the great things that a part-time job does is that it helps young people to develop their self-esteem and build pride in themselves and what they are able to achieve independently of their parents.

We have a whole generation of parents who, I hasten to say, have become the ‘helicopter’ generation, where we are hovering around our kids all the time and trying to protect them from every great unseen threat. I think the helicopter parents could fly off every now and then and let the kids get on with their part-time work, where they can develop a lot of great skills. I think they surprise us sometimes with what they are capable of doing. There is a lot for us as parents to learn from watching our young people when they get into the situation where they have some independence. They are quite extraordinary in terms of what they can contribute in that work environment.

But, again, I hasten to add that it is important that we find a balance for the students. Part-time work does give them independence and the opportunity to make a financial contribution, to ease the pressure on their families. The member for Swan referred to that as an area of some concern. I agree that there is some concern there if it is seen as a financial necessity and families from low-socioeconomic backgrounds need the students to work to contribute to the household income. But, where it is a student who is actually just making a contribution, the students feel a great deal of pride in the fact that they are able to make that contribution and they do not have to go to mum and dad and ask for $10 or $20; they can reach into their own savings. It teaches them a great many skills that will hold them in good stead later in life. Financial literacy is an issue of significant concern in our community. People are finding that they are getting into trouble with credit cards and that type of thing. If our students have the opportunity to earn money at a younger age and learn to budget, save and use their money responsibly on the things that they choose to use it on, the financial literacy that develops is another important aspect of having a part-time job.

Another area that members have spoken about is the opportunity for this generation of students to get into an environment where they are part of a team, where they are working together, and they get to socialise with other workmates—often from other schools, not necessarily their immediate peer group. It gives them the opportunity to communicate and work as a team, rather than sending text messages all the time—which I think is an occupational hazard for many of our young people.

As I referred to earlier, I do understand this real need to make sure there is balance in this issue. The Adolescent overload? report clearly identifies the contribution from some of the parents and the students. In chapter 2 there is a quote from one of the submissions:

Anecdotally, parents tell us that it is of major concern to them that their children are working late at night some nights and long hours within those late nights… it is often stated that the young people in question must choose between these long hours and late nights or give up their jobs—there is reported to be little room for compromise.

We need to understand the competing interests here. The students are primarily at school for an education—they are not to be seen as a product of the economy where they are just a working unit of cheap labour, if you like. The balance does need to be found and a lot of understanding needs to be shown by our teachers as well as the parents and the small business sector. The importance of getting the balance right is a message that is continually highlighted through the report.

Members have also spoken about the protection for young workers who are most vulnerable at that time in their lives to exploitation. It is very difficult for a 15- or 16-year-old girl to stand up to the boss and say, ‘No, that’s not a safe procedure,’ or ‘That’s not the way I understand the work should be done’. I take up the member for Cunningham’s comments, that we do have a heightened level of responsibility to care for young people in the workplace and to make sure that their first experience is a positive one. We have both reflected on our time in supermarkets. I found it overwhelmingly positive to have the opportunity to work with a bunch of young people. There were some more senior managers keeping us all in line, but we had a lot of fun in that work environment and the money was very beneficial to me and my family at the time. Mum and dad had pretty basic incomes and there were five kids, so it really helped take the burden off them. I think it was a very important stepping stone in my career in developing some responsibility.

Taking steps within this part-time and casual work environment to make sure that students are acquiring skills that will help them later in life is a very important aim, and the report does touch on that. It certainly adds to the student’s employability and sets them on the pathway to success. I have had the opportunity in the past to hire people and I often looked at what they did when they were 15- and 16-years old—did they have a part-time job? It gave you a sense that they had a capacity to be self-motivated and could take responsibility. When you are interviewing people for work, even later in life, you do tend to check on what they did as 16-, 17- or 18-year-olds to make sure that they have the capacity to balance their lives and they actually know that there is a time for work, a time for study and a time for play. We have not really looked at this much in terms of public policy development, and I think this report is a good stepping stone. I encourage other members to have a look through it and refer to the recommendations.

I want to go specifically to a few of the recommendations. The first is recommendation 2, which looks at developing and implementing a national generic skills passport. These activities should encompass paid and unpaid work, including community and volunteer activities and work for a family business, along with sporting and recreational activities and other life experiences. I think employability skills and opportunities for some form of accreditation is one area that has a great deal of merit. I imagine it would be fairly difficult to come up with a national scheme in that regard, but it is giving young people recognition for the skills they are learning. A lot of opportunities in the workplace would involve doing a first aid course, for example. I know that a lot of young people in my electorate are involved in things like the surf lifesaving movement. They are developing skills as they go through, and adding to their future employability is a really positive initiative and I support that recommendation.

I referred earlier to recommendation 3, which says:

That the Australian Government, in consultation with stakeholders, develop a Code of Practice for employers, supervisors, and workplace mentors to outline their responsibilities in assisting students to document their acquired employability skills.

That touches on some of the issues of making sure that we really do have a heightened sense of responsibility when we have young people in our care in a workplace. Recommendation 12 refers to support for students at risk and recommends:

That the Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, through the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs, encourage evaluation and reporting on outcomes from local programs targeting disadvantaged students with a view to highlighting positive aspects of programs which could potentially be replicated.

This is a very important recommendation in the report. I do not see that all these responsibilities should fall on the government. I refer to my own community, where local community action encouraging and providing opportunities for young people has been very successful. Just last week in Traralgon the St Paul’s school parents group organised a local shopping trip. Instead of mothers paying $40 or $50 to go on a bus to Melbourne to go to the warehouses to buy their Christmas presents, they organised a local shopping trip. There were 150 mothers split into 12 groups of 12, with a few extras on the end. They went around to local shops that were part of the promotion and were giving them a discount to shop locally. This is a message that I promote regularly in my community. I call it, ‘Putting locals first.’ Admittedly, it is parochial in the sense that I am encouraging local communities to support their own economy rather than always travelling off to the major metropolitan centres. How it works in this sense is that we have a school group, which I think spent about $45,000 on the night—it is the first time in my life that I have ever said to a woman, ‘Go out and spend your money.’ It is very easy to encourage the wives of other people to get their credit cards out, Mr Deputy Speaker. They went out and supported the local shops, and that necessarily leads to local jobs.

One of our great challenges in our regional communities is providing opportunities for young people. We have referred to the increased number of hours available through some of the chain stores and fast food outlets, but supporting small businesses is very important for us. I have made it my job, if you like, to ensure that we promote a message of putting locals first in the lead-up to Christmas for the job opportunities that creates for young people in our community. I think it is a great credit to the parents group of St Paul’s in Traralgon that they took the initiative themselves and undertook a fundraiser at the same time to support their school.

In the time that I do have left I would like to commend the report and the members of the standing committee for the work they have done on this very important issue. I encourage the ministers responsible to have a close look at the recommendations, in particular at the opportunities to support young people as they find the right balance between their academic careers and their working careers and set them on a pathway to succeed in life.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am feeling a bit of angst at the moment because I am supposed to be in the House speaking on some other legislation. This is a very important report and I was really proud to be a part of it. It is just by coincidence that I too would like to congratulate the chair of the committee, the member for Cunningham, Sharon Bird, who is currently in the chamber. I also have my colleague the member for Makin, my friend Tony Zappia, and the secretary of the inquiry, Dr Worthington, in the chamber. That is terrific and I do thank them all very much for participating. I also thank the member for Gippslan for his contribution and support for the report and also for his interest in youth affairs. I know, like many in this place, he is very active about trying to do the right thing by his constituents and certainly by rural and regional Australia, so I congratulate him on that.

The name of the report is Adolescent Overload. It is a report of the inquiry into combining school and work, and into supporting successful youth transitions. That is exactly what it is. Mr Deputy Speaker, you and I have been on committees together for some time and I have prided myself on coming up with titles for committees. The member for Mallee is in the House at the moment and no doubt we will be discussing the name of our next report as well. But I was hoping this one would be called ‘The New Working Class’ or ‘The Working Class’, but I was outvoted. However, that is what the report is essentially about: students working and the important transition from the world of school to the world of work, as well as how we can go about supporting them. I think ‘delicate balance’ is the term we use for it. Chapter 3 is headed ‘School and work: a delicate balance’. Stephanie, a student from New South Wales, summed it up really well. On page 21 of the report she is quoted as saying:

It is very important to me to have a job—it means I am earning money—yet the HSC is also vital. Finding the balance is so important. I don’t think many people know how to do this.

That is really at the heart of our interest in this phenomenon—I think Australia heads the list worldwide in terms of students who are at school, particularly middle school and a little higher, and also doing part-time work—and it is a phenomenon that the member for Cunningham alluded to earlier. Maybe investigating some of the sociological reasons in comparative terms would have been really interesting, too. Anyway, many, many young people do combine work and school. I think the figure quoted in the report is something like 260,000 young people doing this, so it is really important that we have a look at the nature and extent of it and how we might be able to assist.

I think my colleagues would agree that, apart from the terrific aspect of getting around and meeting young people, and having many of them make submissions to the inquiry, the experience for most people was really positive. Some of them spoke with genuine enthusiasm and pride in what they did. What really struck me was when we were comparing our youth—and mine goes much further back than the very honourable member for Cunningham’s. I worked in a milk bar until they worked out that, apart from my arithmetic, I was not going that well. I was all thumbs and fingers on the cash register, so they moved me to the milk, but then I discovered the cigarette stand and started smoking, so I did not work there for long. However, the idea is that it was a rarity to have to go to work then—I certainly did not have to—and it was a very strange world to have young people where the adults were. However, that is not the case today; young people, as we learnt through this inquiry, are doing a full range of work with high levels of responsibility. I think that is where a lot of the pressure points are that a number of these students commented on.

Many students want to work for a whole variety of reasons, and I will outline some of the positive aspects listed in the report. One reason is to enhance a student’s confidence and self esteem, and it certainly seemed to do that for a lot of students that we met. Another is to contribute to their financial wellbeing. That included those who have to work to support their families and there were some pretty sad cases there. You could be looking at the body of a young person but into the eyes of someone who had already had a life experience supporting a family while struggling with school; it was quite moving in some instances.

For others of course it was to get some financial independence from their parents. Many said that they did not want to have to rely on their parents. It is funny, isn’t it, that as they strive for financial independence the parliament over a number of years has increased the age of dependence to 25—and now we are negotiating about bringing it down again. But the reality is that young people seem to be becoming more independent a lot earlier in life but we have put the age of independence out further and further. That seems to be an incongruity between reality and what we are demanding of young people for financial reasons. Perhaps it is saving the budget bottom line, but I do not know how it is assisting people to meet the material needs that they deem necessary in their lives.

Regarding facilitating the development of social networks, the member for Cunningham gave some really good examples of how young people’s world has been expanded. When we were at school we had our school friends but young people now have another world out there—I do not mean just the nightclubs—where they work and take up responsible positions.

I sometimes think—and it certainly came through from some of the discussions we had—that a lot of schools are not even aware of the incredible skill sets that a number of young people have because of their widening social network. What they can do often is not recognised. It is not on their reports and it does not seem to be recognised when references are written. It is as if the worlds of school and work are so totally separate that you cannot connect them. I think this report makes it very clear that we are dealing with a phenomenon where they are intersecting all the time.

The report says students will be allowed to gain useful knowledge and independence and exercise greater responsibility and self-reliance. Well, everybody in this chamber would acknowledge those very important life skills. Certainly the world of work allows them to do that.

Regarding the idea of instilling a work ethic and attitude, I hope there is work ethic and right attitudes at school, but paid work is outside the confines of school and that means they are getting a double dose. This is interesting. The criticism of young people often is that they do not have a work ethic, that they have an attitude problem. Well, they go to work and you hope they are increasing their work ethic and their positive attitudes to work there. Hopefully that is also happening in the schools, but some of the reference is that we are not succeeding in either place—that makes you wonder. Maybe our expectations are so unrealistic these days and we look back to a golden age when we think everything was perfect—

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was!

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We were perfect!

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Look at us—this chamber is full of people with work ethic and, hopefully, worth ethic. I tell you what: a lot of the young people have got them both, and I think that bodes well for the future.

Finally, it is said that students will be enabled to develop work and organisational skills, including time management skills—indeed. Both my sons have had jobs and continue to work. One of them has excellent time management skills and the other one does not, so I think he needs some more work experience to develop those skills. But they are really important skills as we all know.

At page 24, the report quotes Dr Phil McKenzie from the Australian Council for Educational Research:

Working is a very positive experience in the main, as long as it is not an unreasonable number of hours or in an exploitative situation.

I reckon that sums up exactly what the students said about their experiences. They said they could handle the hours in the main as long as there were not too many. I think a lot of them said that about 20 hours were enough and that 15 hours were pretty reasonable. But also they wanted to be valued at work, and that leads me to some of the recommendations that this report makes. One of the main things that came out of the report for me was that employers—like everyone else in this world—enter into social relationships. In this case it is an economic as well as an employer-employee relationship, but in the end it is about valuing each other and what we do and, importantly in the work situation, about the customer.

Many employers that we spoke to were highly cognisant of the needs of young people in their dealings with young people and they were very fair. Some were not, but that was more out of ignorance than anything else. I suppose what the report is saying is: be aware of each other’s needs—from the student’s point of view, the needs of your employer. And you have got to communicate. Likewise, there is a responsibility on the employer to communicate with their employees—in this case, young people. We found that, essentially, some form of compact between the two is really important. If we can do that in a non-onerous way for employers, then I think that is really important. That is the same as a recommendation in here that some form of formal recognition of the employment record and the characteristics and the value of that employee for the employer would be very useful. So communication seems to be at the heart of this—it is at the heart of life, isn’t it? It is certainly at the heart of the workplace. When there are reasonable communications, then there is a good work experience, and I think that is really important.

We thank the schools very much, and I certainly thank my local schools. The committee were kind enough to come to Burnie, and we had the Burnie Chamber of Commerce on 21 April—a couple of days before a momentous event in world history, apart from Shakespeare’s birthday—

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Do you know when it is, Member for Braddon?

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do—it is the same day as my birthday, Mr Deputy Speaker! We had the Hellyer campus of the Tasmanian Academy, we had Latrobe High School, Penguin High School and Reece High School. I do thank them very much; it was a really good day.

An important thing to come out of that meeting was this: we asked, ‘Do you officially record if your students work—part-time or whatever?’ The essential answer was no. I do not know how many other schools are like this, but I think it is fairly fundamental that your school knows you are involved in the world of work. One, I would have thought it is pretty important to know your student anyway; and, two, it might be pretty important—as we enter into this almost case-managing, flexible learning mode that we are moving towards, and which is really important—to understand and recognise the skills and competencies that your students have before they get to school, particularly at the senior secondary level. That just struck me as being pretty fundamental because they are adding to the stock of the skills and competencies of your campus. Some said that they knew at the individual class level, but then you do not understand it from the generic level of the school—if you are looking at behaviour patterns of students and their work and so on. So I suppose what we are saying is that communication is at the heart of these social contracts. It is really important in terms of formal records that people have an understanding of what their students are doing outside of the classroom because it has a bearing on what happens in the classroom.

In summary, the title Adolescent overload? is followed by a question mark. I am not sure there was an overload, however. I think most students really got the balance right. They are definitely a new working class and I was really pleased that that description tends to fit the report. I thank all those who participated in this inquiry, particularly our chair, the secretary, my fellow members who took part and everyone who made submissions.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, I certainly welcome this opportunity to comment on the report, Adolescent overload? Report of the inquiry into combining school and work: supporting successful youth transitions. I will begin by thanking the chair, Sharon Bird—the member for Cunningham, who is in the chamber right now—for her leadership and commitment to this inquiry. In fact her own personal experience in education proved to be invaluable in assisting the committee in carrying out its inquiry and its report. I also thank the secretariat, led by Dr Glenn Worthington, for their support and also for their excellent summary of the committee’s work which is reflected in this report.

I particularly thank the committee for coming to my electorate of Makin in the course of the inquiry and visiting Para Hills High School to see and hear firsthand from teachers and students at that school. Regrettably I was unable to join the committee on the visit, but I do frequently visit Para Hills High School. I have a longstanding association with the school and in fact will be attending the school’s graduation ceremony next week. Through that longstanding association, I am very much aware of the school’s activities and its commitment to vocational education and providing career pathways for its students. When I have attended the school over the years—with the previous principal, Trevor Rogers, and with the current principal, Janette Scott—I have seen firsthand how that school is responding through its specific understanding of the needs of the students that attend the school. From my experience of the region generally, each of the high schools are confronted with different challenges, and that is one school that has understood those challenges and responded with the right kinds of policies that have enabled it to give students who attend the school the best possible support that it can.

Combining school with work has both positive and negative consequences, dependent on factors such as the nature of the work, the number of hours worked, the family support, and the personal qualities, characteristics and abilities of the individual—all matters that you, Mr Deputy Speaker Sidebottom, as a member of the committee along with me, would have noted in the submissions that were made to the inquiry. Whilst there certainly are considerable positive elements involved with young people being engaged in work—and no-one disputes them—I want to focus my remarks on the negative aspects of secondary students combining school and work.

Again, the findings are variable. Although it is generally accepted that excessive work hours ultimately do have a negative impact on a student’s educational success and future career opportunities, the fact of the matter is that the effects change from student to student and from region to region, due to a range of factors, including the way the school manages the students who are engaged in work. It would appear to me, however, that combining study with up to about 10 hours of work per week or thereabouts is manageable by most young people without seriously affecting their educational outcomes. Beyond that, the impacts become more noticeable.

A number of members of the committee have commented on young people who work in fast food outlets. Two weeks ago it was McHappy Day in South Australia—and perhaps across Australia—where the McDonald’s chain of fast-food outlets raises money for, in Adelaide, Ronald McDonald House. As I usually do, I went and worked at the local McDonald’s fast food outlet for a couple of hours. It was non-stop work for the couple of hours I was there. I contemplated what it must have been like for the young girl who had been working there since six o’clock in the morning and was due to finish at two o’clock in the afternoon. That would have been an eight-hour shift. All I can say is that I am sure she would have been looking forward to the end of her shift, because the work pressure I observed there was intense.

A survey that was presented to the committee in respect of the hours that young people participate in employment showed that 30 per cent of students in employment work one to six hours, 44 per cent work six to 12 hours, 21 per cent work 12 to 20 hours, five per cent work 20 to 30 hours and one per cent work in excess of 30 hours per week. The good thing about that survey is that 74 per cent, or three-quarters, of the students who are working work for 12 hours or less per week, which, as I said earlier, I believe is manageable. I particularly note the effect of work on male students, with evidence presented to the committee pointing to male students engaged in part-time work being less likely to complete year 12. Evidence from Vickers, Lamb and Hinkley found:

Males who work 5 to 15 hours per week during Year 9 are approximately 40 per cent less likely to complete Year 12 than those who do not, while males who work more than fifteen hours per week … are approximately 60 per cent less likely to complete Year 12

The report further states:

Females who work part-time during Year 9 are much more likely to complete Year 12 than their male counterparts.

I have two observations to make about that. It is clear that young males who engage in part-time work during the course of their high school years are more likely to be distracted from continuing with their education studies and pursuing a tertiary education and may enter the workforce much earlier. That is a concern. It is clear that those effects are not as bad amongst females who work whilst they are at high school.

The concern, however, is that, on the one hand, we may want young people to engage in some part-time work because of the beneficial aspects of it but, on the other hand, we run the serious risk of distracting them from what should be their long-term career aspirations. It certainly is of concern that young males appear to be less able to handle work situations than females. I am not quite sure why that is but it certainly appears to be the case. Those figures that were presented in the report certainly confirm the evidence of my own observations from attending schools over the years and seeing firsthand how many of the young males that undertake part-time work do not ultimately complete year 12. If you want to look at those statistics a bit more closely you will note that when you go to year 12 graduations it is likely that you will see more females graduating than males. And that is confirmation of those trends.

I will take a moment to talk about the educational impacts on young people who are both carers and in employment. These young people are particularly at risk. According to Carers Australia—I refer to paragraph 7.32 in the report—only four per cent of primary carers between the ages of 15 and 25 years are still in education compared to 23 per cent of the general population in that age group. That is four per cent of carers compared to 23 per cent—one sixth—who continue with their education. In that same reference we see:

60% of young primary carers aged 15-25 are unemployed or not in the labour force, compared with 38% for the general population in the same group.

I comment on that aspect of young people in employment for the following reason. I was able to host a forum relating to disabilities in the electorate of Makin with the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services, the Hon. Bill Shorten. At that forum I can very clearly recall two young ladies—both still trying to study—who stood up and said, ‘As carers trying to get an education we need more assistance if we are going to be able to complete our education.’ They were literally pleading with the parliamentary secretary for the government to provide more support for them.

You can just imagine and appreciate their situation. They were trying to go to school but they would come home from school and be full-time carers of their mothers. And, in addition to being carers, they were trying to juggle a few hours of work to make ends meet—not just for themselves but for the household. To see those people, at such a young age, be burdened with such significant responsibility was heartbreaking. So I am pleased that the report touches on that aspect of young people’s lives. I note that the report comments also on the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family, Community, Housing, and Youth, which also made reference to this issue. It is an important issue and I certainly support the pleas for additional government support for young students who find themselves as carers in the community.

Most speakers have already made the point that students often work out of financial necessity, and that is absolutely the case. For years, I have been representing people from the north-eastern and northern communities of Adelaide. It is an area, particularly the northern suburbs of Adelaide, which is considered to be of lower socioeconomic status. Time and time again, I have seen young people, either because they come from broken homes or because the income level of the household is simply insufficient, literally forced to go and work.

It is sad because those young people frequently have the intellectual capacity to be real achievers if given the opportunity to pursue tertiary studies. In fact, some recent studies carried out by the University of South Australia confirm that—that young people from lower socioeconomic status areas who have been given an opportunity to go to university are, once given that break, performing just as well as students from other areas. The sad thing about it is that those same young people, because they are forced into work situations, in turn have their studies interrupted or affected, and sometimes they are unable to perform well at school, simply because of the hours that they are working. In turn, they do not complete year 12 and do not go on to university. So the whole cycle of disadvantage is perpetuated when they, in turn, settle down, have a home and try to survive on a low income, perhaps because they never completed any form of tertiary education.

Another aspect is that, quite often, we see those young people faced with serious health problems as a result of: (a) working too long; and (b) abusing their bodies both physically and nutritionally, through not getting the right types of food into their system, because they are working too long and rushing from one place to another. I am very much aware of that. I think it was Kostas Papadopoulos from Para Hills High School who made the point that many young people, when they get to school, are taking excessive amounts of these energy-boosting drinks just to get through the day. I am very much aware of that because I have seen it for myself.

I will finish by making this point: the Rudd government is absolutely committed to education. The government has invested a record amount of $62.8 billion over the next triennium because it recognises and understands the importance of education both to the individual and to the national economy. It is a commitment and a priority that I thoroughly endorse.

The government investment, however, whilst critical, needs to take into account other factors which may affect educational outcomes. This report, I believe, not only comments about those other factors but also raises awareness of what they are. Dealing with this issue is a complex area of public policy because, as I stated earlier, there are positive and negative aspects of it and there is a wide variety of considerations. But it is an important area of public policy which we, as a parliament, should be aware of when we make and consider education policies. We need to understand what the real world for students is like. Once again I commend the report to the House for consideration and thank all the other members of the committee who I worked with on this report.

Debate (on motion by Mr Danby) adjourned.