Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training, I present the committee's report, titled Education in remote and complex environments, incorporating a dissenting report, together with the minutes of the proceedings.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—Education in remote and complex environments was the topic of our inquiry: meeting the needs of students in regional, remote and rural communities and those in complex circumstances. We recognise that, amongst Australians, we see lower educational attainment in both school and tertiary education for those living in remote areas, and that a range of factors contribute to both a child's education journey and their ultimate education achievement.

The committee was mindful that significant work has already been done by both the Halsey and Napthine reviews, and we wanted to work on 14 recommendations to take forward from there. These covered areas including a nationally consistent minimum standard for access to secondary school education, regardless of geographic location; providing greater opportunities for families and communities to have more say in how schools apply the Australian curriculum; ensuring that education is available to young people with a disability in remote and rural locations, and that it remains inclusive; that mental health services are improved; that quality early education is improved; and that up to 30 hours a week of subsidised early education and care is available for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. The recommendations also cover supporting early learning programs through distance education and ensuring surety of funding, in particular for mobile early childhood education services and for wraparound models of early intervention. There is a recommendation for adult literacy campaigns in communities where English literacy levels are low and a recommendation for improving access to support for English as an additional language or dialect and access to bilingual education, particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. The report also recommends supporting the development and professionalisation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workforce; establishing trauma-informed cultural induction and training programs for educators who work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students; and enhancing the integration of Australia's vocational education and training with the higher education sector.

On behalf of our committee, we want to really thank not only those who made rich and varied written submissions to our inquiry and those who participated in our limited public hearing program but also those who were enthusiastic in inviting us to participate in more regional visits, some of which were not possible because of COVID-19 conditions.

The pandemic has significantly disrupted education of Australian students in 2020, with a huge strain on the capacity of education systems, on schools and teachers, to deliver education in complex environments and outside of classrooms. This shift to online learning disadvantaged many, and particularly those from vulnerable families in their early years of schooling, and it really did expose a digital divide between families who have access to high-quality internet services and internet-enabled devices and those who don't. The harsh reality was, even where schools were prepared to cater for families with vulnerable children or essential workers and their children, many simply didn't turn up. While online education has the potential to bridge these gaps, it's really shown to be no substitute for in-classroom teaching. Many issues still need to be worked through, and that will be one of the great learnings of COVID—enhanced online pedagogy and teacher training. Jurisdictions are encouraged nationwide to prioritise the safe delivery of in-school teaching and home based learning, and to closely follow public health advice when deciding on many of these matters, including what attendance at school activities is possible, and, particularly, levels of parental engagement and access to school facilities and venues.

I'd like to thank my co-chair, the member for Bendigo, the committee, and the dedicated secretariat, led by John White and Julia Morris, who assisted us through the COVID period to deliver this report.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—Thank you for giving me the opportunity to make a few statements in relation to the report. It was difficult during the COVID period —as many members of committees would acknowledge—to be able to conduct an inquiry and then, in fact, to have a report to table. At the outset, I do want to acknowledge the hard work done by so many to see the report that is before us today. In particular, I want to thank the secretariat for their efforts in pulling the report together. It's a comprehensive report. I also want to thank the many organisations and individuals who contributed, the many people who made submissions and the witnesses who attended the roundtables that we had in relation to this topic.

What we learnt, again, is that this is an issue that people really care about. The educational achievements of regional, rural and remote students continue to be lower than those of their metropolitan peers and have been so for many years. Despite this fact being well known and well researched, as our investigations show, little has been achieved to reverse this trend. We are still seeing the same outcomes.

For the most part, the Education in remote and complex environments report is balanced and reflects the evidence the committee received. However, the Labor members of the committee did feel that some of the recommendations lacked the urgency that many of the members on the committee felt the recommendations needed to reflect the evidence that was received. In our view, the evidence presented to the committee clearly indicates that the current government's 2014 decision to cut school funding associated with the former Labor government's Better Schools Plan funding model was the wrong decision, as it had a disproportionate impact on regional, remote and rural schools. This was highlighted in the evidence presented. One clear statistic that demonstrated this is that, by 2023, schools in the Northern Territory will be funded at 21 per cent less than the schooling resource standard. This is the government's own work. Yet these are the schools where the Indigenous population in the NT sits at 44 per cent. So, if you cut school funding in the way the government has, you directly impact the very schools that we're seeking to support. As the chair has said, the pandemic has exacerbated existing fault lines in the Australian education system and will impact students from rural, regional and remote communities more than their counterparts in metro, and particularly inner metro, areas. That is why we really do seek that the government take the recommendations of this report seriously and act sooner.

One other area I wish to highlight is early childhood education. The Labor members of the committee argued that access to education in ECEC should be universal—like primary school or secondary school—and currently it is not. The educational and developmental benefits of ECEC are indisputable; the science is in. Yet many families, including those in regional, rural and remote Australia, face significant barriers in accessing affordable ECEC. That is why we seek to highlight, in our additional comments, the areas that were not included or focused on in the report. Cost was a barrier talked about in much of the evidence. The cost of delivering ECEC in the regions was an issue, and the cost of attending these services was an issue. We believe that this needed to be a stronger focus in the recommendations.

Another area that was identified by the evidence presented to the committee was that low pay is a barrier to recruitment and retention of highly skilled, predominantly female, workers. Again we're presented with this issue—the fact that pay is a contributing factor towards why we're not attracting the highly skilled workers we need. It's a genuine barrier, and we need to have a plan as part of the workforce strategy. In our comments, we strongly urge the government to play a proactive role in supporting the sector's ability to increase wages in the workforce, as a workforce development strategy, to help combat recruitment and retention challenges.

The final area that I wish to highlight, because I know other members of the committee wish to speak now and in the Federation Chamber, is higher education. The university sector was unanimous in their criticism of the government and its lack of support for the sector during the COVID-19 crisis. Whilst they acknowledged that the Higher Education Support Amendment (Job-Ready Graduates and Supporting Regional and Remote Students) Bill 2020 would help, they argued the additional places were not being rolled out fast enough to meet the demand; nor would it address the dire financial situation that universities are in. The universities that were a part of the roundtable did, on many occasions, talk about the impact of not having measures like JobKeeper to help keep their staff. One of the key recommendations that the universities would like to see this government move on quickly is the uncapping of university places for regional universities. This would ensure that all regional students would have access to a university place, if they choose to study. This was a key recommendation of the Napthine review. If the government and the Minister for Education were serious about implementing the recommendations of their own Napthine review, they would move to immediately implement this recommendation, which would see more university places for our regional universities and encourage more regional students to study.

We would also like to encourage the government to consider the funding models for university, as highlighted by the evidence presented to the committee. We acknowledge that this is a complex area, but lots of research has been done, and we're in the place now where it is about action. We strongly encourage the government to take on board the recommendations in the report, as well as the additional comments, to help move us forward to ensure that every student, regardless of where they live, has access to a quality education. It appears to be the one thing that is universal, the acknowledgement that we want to do something about this complex area.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.