Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) all students, including students with disability, deserve to be recognised as learners and supported to achieve their best;

(b) research by Children with Disability Australia shows that as many as one in four children with disability have been denied school enrolment, almost one in five only attend school part time, and 68 per cent of parents believe their children do not receive adequate support at school; and

(c) the Senate Education and Employment References Committee inquiry into the education of students with disability is underway, giving parents, teachers, students and others with experience and expertise, the opportunity to highlight problems in our school system and identify best practice for the future;

(2) acknowledges the:

(a) hard work and dedication of teachers, parents, schools and carers across Australia; and

(b) many programs and services helping students to achieve their best every day; and

(3) calls upon the Government to:

(a) keep its promises on funding and support for students with disability;

(b) continue working with the states and territories to complete the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability program, and implement the Gonski disability loading;

(c) reverse its cuts to education, including the termination of the More Support for Students with Disabilities program; and

(d) recognise that supporting students with disability is a long term investment that pays dividends for students and Australia.

I know I am not the only Australian and not the only person in this chamber who has been shaken by stories that we have read in newspapers over the past year about how our school system is struggling to deal with students with disability. We have read reports about widespread incidents of bullying against students with disability. We have heard from teachers who are really struggling without the training and support that they need to deal with students with special needs. There was one absolutely awful incident at the margins of this debate of a young autistic student here in the ACT who was being kept at some points during their education in a cage in one of their classrooms.

These are shocking stories and I raise them in the parliament not to condemn the various incidents that I have mentioned in particular but because these incidents, according to Children with Disability Australia, which is the peak body that represents children with disability and their families, are growing in number. The stories of these children are important for many reasons. They are important because they highlight that there are individuals in our community whose human rights are not being respected, but they also highlight that there is a crisis in our system in how we are providing educational opportunities for students with disabilities. The examples that I have put forward are some extreme examples within this problem. It is incredibly important context that there are some students with disability who are getting a great education in our system, and we should not ignore that. But in a submission to the Senate inquiry that is currently underway on this subject Children with Disability Australia wrote that amongst these families:

A quality education experience for a student with disability is still likened to winning the lottery.

I know from speaking with my colleagues that this is the feedback we as members of parliament get from lots of the families in our communities who are managing this problem.

In recent months, Labor has established a Senate inquiry into this incredibly important issue, and I want to raise some of the issues that we are hearing and that are coming up in that inquiry. Reading some of the submissions that have been made to the inquiry is frankly incredibly gruelling, especially for the many in this chamber who are parents of children themselves. What we have learned so far in the inquiry is that children with disability are regularly plagued by high rates of bullying, exclusion and abuse. Parents talk about a culture of low expectation, where the education system is not treating these students as though they have the capacity to learn, to grow and to develop. We hear in particular about patchy and insufficient funding for these students, many of whom need special support. One of the really disappointing consequences we are finding is that, because of the lack of discussion about this subject and because of the lack of conversation within schools, students who are exhibiting difficult behaviour are being labelled as 'naughty' and treated as though they were doing something wrong, when in fact they are not getting the support that they need.

Perhaps not surprisingly, hearing these facts, the outcomes for these students are not nearly where they ought to be given the prosperous country that we live in today A third of young people with disability do not ever finish school. It is an absolutely gut-wrenching fact that one in four students with disability in Australia has been refused school entry at some point during their school career. We know that seven in 10 parents of students with disability say that their students are not getting the support that they need. I believe this is a really urgent national problem.

We heard some good rhetoric from the government before the election and, I have to say, I really hope that we see some good bipartisanship on the issue of disability. That is certainly the talk that we hear. There are some specific proposals in the Gonski school reforms that relate to students with special need and students with disability, and I am a bit frustrated that the undertakings that were made before the election by the Abbott government have not been fulfilled to date. I call on the government to fulfil the election commitments that they made in relation to specific funding for students with disability. This is a really urgent and important task, especially when we consider what is a very surprisingly high number of young people in this country who struggle with disability. What people in the disability community often talk about is frustration that people with disability sometimes feel they are to be hidden from the broader community. There are 200,000 Australians of school age who have a disability. On average, there should be a child with disability in every Australian classroom, but that is not what we tend to see. We are in the middle of a really important shift in our community in thinking about people with disability, from focusing on what people cannot do to what they can do. Education is the next frontier of this debate and I encourage the parliament to tackle this issue head-on.

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

Thank you. Is there a seconder for the motion?

Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion. I thank the member for Hotham for raising such an important issue. It is an issue that has many complex levels within it. I take this from the International Year of Disabled Persons, when that was first a focus for educational reform in Australia. The issue is the mindset and understanding of people who are not only within schools but within communities. In that era, people with disabilities or cerebral palsy or a special medical condition were often placed in special education centres and we did not have the interaction that we saw emerge in the 80s when children were brought into mainstream classrooms. When you take an initiative like that, you also have to consider the training for teachers. The point that the member for Hotham made, in terms of the teaching profession, is critical. In those days you were dealing with 30 children in a classroom and, if you had somebody in your classroom with very particular needs, there was also the requirement for support and additional effort, not only by the school but by the education sector.

When this motion was proposed, I spoke to both major jurisdictions in Western Australia: Catholic Education and state education. I want to acknowledge the intent and effort made by those jurisdictions in trying to provide for students in an inclusive environment. In fact, one of them stated that students with sensory disabilities or those with ongoing medical conditions are eligible to receive services through the Department of Education or their local Catholic schools through a range of services that they provide. But the other layer in this that they alluded to is community perception. We look at anybody who is different to what we consider meets normal expectation in classrooms or in human beings with a lack of understanding. We never make the effort to be as tolerant as we should be, but we also set benchmarks at a lower level; we never look at expectations. I look at some people who have progressed, like Hawking. If you looked at him in his wheelchair, you would not get a perception of his intellect and capacity and his contribution to the world. In my own teaching profession and career, I had children with disabilities of varying degrees. It was hard work, but I also had a responsibility as a teacher to ensure that consideration was given to what students within my classroom needed. Teachers need to understand a child in their presence and need to think about the potential of that individual. Often we forget about the potential and capacity that a person has.

I have been following the Senate inquiry, like you have, Member for Hotham. I think that some of the submissions I have read are gut wrenching in terms of parents wanting systems to respond to their child, and every parent wants that, but in many cases they are frustrated that some of the very particular services that they need for their child to progress in their educational pathway are not there. I hope that what comes out of the Senate inquiry is a rethink of the mindset around the services and supports that are needed by students and children with disabilities. I know that health and education systems will always say that the expectation of parents is far greater than their capacity to deliver—both the professional approach and the resources required. I think as a society we have an obligation to make sure that the weakest of those in our society, or those who are challenged in their disposition in life, are accorded the same opportunity as anybody else. On that basis, I would hope that the report comes out with some very far-reaching recommendations that cause the rethinking of the delivery of education and training.

I held a disability forum in my first term, and the mothers on that forum all expressed to me that they not only wanted their children to get a good sound education but also wanted them to look at training and career pathways. When they leave this earth, they want their children to be in a position where they can cope for themselves, be part of a community and be accepted for who they are and their capacity to contribute to their community.

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

I am absolutely pleased to rise to speak on what I believe is an incredibly important issue. I thank the member for Hotham and I thank the member for Hasluck. This is an issue that goes to the heart of our schools and our communities. Having come from a public sector education in Victoria, I know the work that has gone on in schools to ensure that students' human rights are being met and to ensure that, from the principal down, inclusive practices are occurring on the ground in our schools. I have worked at the coal face with parents of students with disability as they enter what they often perceive to be a hostile environment. This is difficult work. It is time consuming work. It is important work. It is imperative that all of our students in all of our schools have high expectations made of them from their parents and from their schools.

I was one who was heartened before the election to hear Minister Pyne, now the minister, say on 23 August that more funding for people with disability through the disability loading would be in our schools in 2015. It is now nine months into 2015 and this promise of new funding has not been met. The reality is that, because of this government's cruel broken promise, students with disability will simply be locked into educational disadvantage and will not have the resources they need to meet their full potential. Despite how hard schools work, the resources need to be put in place.

The review should have been completed. That is why there is a Senate inquiry. Labor initiated it because we believe every student, including students with a disability, deserves a great education. We believe they all need to have expectations set, that they can learn and that support is put in place to ensure that they do learn. We have heard from the member for Hotham of the research by Children with Disability Australia showing that as many as one in four children with a disability have been denied enrolment. This is an appalling statistic, but it is a statistic that can be addressed with action from this government.

Keeping promises is what government is about, and we have thousands of families waiting for this promise to be kept. In Victoria the state government is conducting a government schools funding review conducted by Steve Bracks, our former Premier. He has released an interim report this weekend, and there are a couple of key things in there that I think are worthy to echo in this chamber today. Schools and the community want trust and confidence in Victoria's funding system—a fairly simple statement but one that we need to see heeded. They want a system that provides resources to schools based on the educational needs of students to obtain a high-quality education—again, something that needs to be addressed by this government. Specifically, with students with disability, the interim report reads:

Stakeholders are concerned that funding is not meeting the diverse needs of students with disability, compounded by the growth in numbers of students. Many parents have fought for extra funds for their children and will resist schools pooling funds for broader use. Concerns were also raised that children with learning difficulties are not funded in the same ways as students with disabilities.

These are the issues that Minister Pyne's promise before the election go to the core of, and yet it is September 2015 and still we hear nothing. Our parents, our teachers and our carers work incredibly hard but they need to be supported by government. They need this government, they need Minister Pyne, to focus on the things that are needed in our schools, to take responsibility—not have the federal government walk away from its responsibility in our schools. This is an issue that differs state by state, and until we get a national approach to students with disability in our schools we will continue to have what happens in Queensland to be different from what happens in Victoria, and to drive parents to despair.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was sent a photograph by my younger brother, who is now a primary school principal. It was his grade 3 class, Texas State School, 1970—34 children in the class, one teacher, no computers, no data projectors, nothing. Six of the kids in the whole class had shoes on. Every one of those children could read and write. The way our curriculum is, the way our teachers are trained today and what is expected of a teacher today are so vastly different to what was expected in those days, during my time. I find the pressure that we put on teachers today not only to step up as surrogate parents but also to be social workers, to handle difficult situations, to diagnose areas of disability—especially with autism and Asperger's—to be a huge impost on people who are paid as professionals to teach. My ultimate thing here in this speech is to beg everyone that we let teachers teach, and we must support them in that endeavour.

My wife is an early childhood teacher, and she has a Down syndrome child in her class. We have to be able to, from a local level, redefine success. What is success for a normal happy, healthy child is being able to get through that class and progress to year 1 and onward into a full-blown education. What my wife's Down syndrome child defines as success and what the parents define as success should be something that is done on a very local level. She has started school completely non-verbal and has finished at the school being able to say 'more hugs from Ms Linda'. It is a massive step. What Lola has been able to bring to my wife's school is a level of texture, a level of giving and a level of love that you just do not come across all that often. That comes down to what the principal does. It is about how empathetic he or she is towards a child, towards inclusion in our education system. We have massive opportunity here but we also have massive responsibility. As the member for Hasluck said previously, what we used to do was just bar these kids from classrooms and put them in special places where they would sink to the lowest common denominator—to the lowest level. We are better than that. But, when it comes to funding, we have to be able to divest the area where they can access funding to where the teacher needs it.

Quite often we see from schools and boards of educations and from state governments that the area that is required to be taken away all the time is for aides—the people who are needed the most to be able to attend to children who are non-toilet trained in grade 1. A teacher cannot do that. Supporting a teacher and getting that decision-making ability as close as possible to the teacher, as close as possible to their customer, is the best thing that we can do. We need to be able to have flexibility. At Hermit Park State School, Clayton Carnes, the principal, is a fantastic educator. He is able to shift resources from one classroom to another because his teachers work as a team and they are able to pull those resources and make sure the child needing the most resources gets the most assistance. That is what we have to do.

I agree with the Member for Lalor: there are many things that we have to be able to do in this space. This is one of the frustrations I have as chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment. When you cross over from federal to state boundaries and cloud those issues, it seems to me that we always leave enough room to blame each other for not doing enough. I always say that I am not a federalist, but a national response has its appeal. I would prefer a school-by-school response. I would prefer a school to be able to say, 'We welcome this. We are able to cope with it. And our school community demands that we are accepting of these things.' Change comes from the bottom up, not the top down. We have to do better than we are doing. I agree with everyone on this. This is a hugely important thing. We have to be inclusive. My son, who finished year 7, was Lola's year 7 buddy. He is a better person today because of what Lola gave him. We have to be more expansive. I thank the House.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the motion put forward by the member of Hotham. I commend her for the motion. I speak on behalf of the many special schools in the seat of Moreton and their students, their families, their aides, their allied health workers, their teachers and school leaders. I am always happy to talk about education. I was a school teacher for 11 years before becoming a lawyer. I appreciate and value the importance of education for every child, whatever challenges and opportunities they bring to the classroom door.

In government, Labor implemented the More Support for Students with Disabilities program. That program was designed as an interim arrangement while data was collected in collaboration with the states and territories to finalise the Gonski loading for students with disability. The Abbott government promised before the election to continue to fund Labor's Gonski school reforms for students with disability. We were seen to be on the same page when it came to Gonski. However, the coalition's first budget cut the More Support for Students with Disabilities program—a program investing $100 million per year to support students with disability—and we have seen the budgets put forward by the Treasurer that have confirmed the $30-billion cut to school funding, which will obviously impact on all students, particularly those with disability. This motion calls on the government to continue working with the states and territories to complete the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability program and implement the Gonski disability loading, reverse its cuts and restore the More Support for Students with Disabilities program. Children with disability deserve to be supported to the maximum extent in the classroom. The hardworking teachers in this sector deserve to be supported.

The schools in my electorate of Moreton deliver so much with so little, particularly in the area of meeting the diverse learning needs of students in classrooms, special education programs and early childhood development programs. Moreton receives great service from Calamvale Special School, Kuraby Special School, Sunnybank Special School, Tennyson Special School and Yeerongpilly Early Childhood Development Program, which is located on the grounds of Yeronga State School and is an Education Queensland facilitate for young children with hearing loss from a birth to pre-prep, just to name some of the institutions in Moreton. These are all specialist schools for children with disability. Some other schools in Moreton run programs within their school for children with disability, such as MacGregor State School, where the principal, Michael Ennis, has 1,293 students—it is a very big primary school—and 63 of those students have a disability. These students are fully included in the school and are a valued part of the school community.

The Sunnybank Special School, with principal Mr Darren Greenway, has 44 full-time students. Their early childhood development program has 11 children, who are aged from three to five years. This is a very small school with nine full-time teachers and four part-time teachers. As a very small school in a growing area, they are often overlooked in terms of funding.

The Kuraby Special School has 78 full-time students. The students range from prep to year 12. Principal Jenny Horchner-Wilson has 17 dedicated teachers at this school and I can tell you their Christmas pageants are one of the most heart-touching parts of my job.

The principal of the Calamvale Special School, Tom Byrne, recently brought some of his students to Canberra. I was privileged to spend some time with them, along with the member for Rankin because the school is in Rankin but right on the border. They were having a great time in Parliament House when I caught up with them. Calamvale is one of the largest special schools in my area: it has 130 students. All students have significant intellectual disabilities. Several students have multiple disabilities, including autism, cerebral palsy and hearing impairments. The students' ages range from five to 18. There are 22 classes at Calamvale with 80 teachers, including teacher aides.

All students at Calamvale Special School learn Auslan. Incredibly, their senior class of eight students conducts all of its lessons bilingually using both English and Auslan. The principal, Tom Byrne, explained that some autistic children cannot verbalise, so learning Auslan actually gives those children a way of communicating. It also allows those with hearing impairments to be included. This is a modern, progressive classroom which is thinking smart so that every student is given maximum advantage in life. It is overcoming these types of challenges that might make many teachers from 30 to 40 years ago weep but which makes these schools in my electorate so special.

Obviously, Labor values the hard work and dedication of teachers, parents, schools and carers across Australia. We see that by investing in education, particularly in schools that are underresourced—as per the Gonski model—we can actually boost productivity in the long run. So I commend again the member for Hotham for bringing forward this motion, and I commend it to the chamber.

Craig Laundy (Reid, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not know what I have done to deserve this but, at the moment, I keep finding myself in a position where, through personal experience, I am drawn into talking about topics that are extremely close to my heart, and this is another one.

I commend the member for Hotham on the motion and agree with the principle that we need to do more. Why? Because at two years of age, my youngest daughter, Analise, was diagnosed with a bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. It was a severe hearing loss. We have no history of deafness in our family and, at that stage in our life with three kids under five and me at work, we thought our world had come to an end. Through Australian Hearing and the Catherine Sullivan early intervention centre, in Strathfield, we ultimately taught Analise to talk and, through holding Analise back a couple of years, we were in a position where we could enter Analise in mainstream schooling. It was then that we ran into the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children—the RIDBC—and their itinerant teacher program. Today Analise is a 13-year-old young lady—13 going on 35. She battles; it is a daily grind for her. I remember that when we started Analise at school there was no hearing loop in the common areas. We were blessed, through our financial position, by being able to install a hearing loop to give her more of a chance. But I acknowledge that I was in a unique position. The vast majority of her co-students and students throughout Australia are not in that position. Without that hearing loop, Analise cannot hear properly in a crowded environment. It was just essential for her to have: once again, it was about the needs of the individual student being catered for in an educational environment.

The member for Hasluck so poignantly put the case that parents do worry about the long-term success of their children. That is not relevant only in the field of disability or challenges—and I like calling them challenges rather than disability. Why? Because we are human. We know that, because we are human, we are not going to be here forever, and we hope that whatever challenges our children are faced with they may be enabled to not only strive through those but prosper, irrespective of whether or not we are here to support them. I do agree with the member for Hotham that the funding that was allocated through this stream is vitally important, and it was acknowledged in pre-election that we would deliver that in 2015. I have had discussions with the minister for education, and I am confident that he will deliver on that election commitment.

I want to raise a very specific point beyond my own family's experience. I have the honour of representing the second most culturally diverse seat in federal parliament. The member for Parramatta is my next-door neighbour; her seat is only just behind mine in the ranking order. I have a school at Chalmers Road. It is technically in Watson, a block out of my electorate, but I have a lot to do with that school. It is a school that deals with children afflicted with all ranges of disabilities. In a multicultural space where parents have moved to Australia as a new home, English is a challenge and they are unaware of the services that are provided for both early intervention and diagnosis before early intervention, it is even more important that we come up with pathways that are readily available and easily accessible so that at any stage suspicion can turn into diagnosis and intervention and set that potential student on a path that will allow them to thrive through the challenge that God has presented them and their family with. It is my great hope that—not only with the funding we are talking about today but over time as technology improves and as our budget position improves—there is more that we can do in this space. Why? Because I quite frankly think that there is never enough you can do. I thank the member for Hotham for her motion, and have welcomed the chance to talk to it today.

Debate adjourned.