THE A W JONES LECTURE
Chris Sidoti
Visiting Professor
School
of Applied Social and Human Sciences
University of Western Sydney
Adelaide
University
14 March 2001
Synopsis | Introduction | The Right To Education | The Nature Of Education | What We Found
What We Recommended | A National Strategy | Cross-sector Collaboration | Local Partnerships | Other Recommendations
Will It Be Implemented? | Conclusion
SYNOPSIS [TOC]
The right to education is a fundamental human right recognised in international treaties to which Australia has committed itself. It is fundamental because so many other rights depend on it. Access to good quality education affects the rights to health, employment, participation in political and cultural life and the exercise of freedoms such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion and belief. It is a right to which every person is entitled without discrimination.
Many young Australians are unable to enjoy the right to education adequately or equally. Many are unable to enjoy it at all. Children in rural and remote areas are especially disadvantaged, with the rights of indigenous children and children with disabilities most abused of all.
The consequences of this situation are stark. It divides our nation. It harms all Australians when some Australians are denied the opportunities and resources to achieve their full potential.
This year may be the best chance for many years to turn around government policies towards education. There will be a federal election late in the year and both major political parties realise that a great deal more has to be done. So now is the time to ensure that the right decisions are taken to benefit all Australian children.
Introduction [TOC]
Working with Dr AW Jones is itself an education. It is also a great pleasure. I worked with Alby Jones during 1999-2000 during the course of the National Inquiry into Rural and Remote Education undertaken by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. As Human Rights Commissioner at the time I was appointed by the Commission to conduct the Inquiry on its behalf with the assistance of six co-commissioners.
The co-commissioners were appointed for their expertise in rural and remote education, one from each state and territory except Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. They were selected to ensure that the Inquiry at the highest level heard and responded to the different perspectives and experiences of the principal participants in rural and remote education: parents, teachers, students, administrators, policy makers, government and non-government providers, indigenous people and those who live on isolated properties. We sought advice from many organisations and individuals on persons suitable for appointment. When it came to selecting a co-commissioner for South Australia and a co-commissioner with experience in running a large school system, the advice we received from many quarters was clear and strong. It had to be Alby Jones.
Alby, we were told, had had a remarkable career in education in South Australia spanning over 50 years - indeed spanning almost his entire 80 something years. From school student in the 1920s to doctoral studies in the 1980s. From country teacher on the Eyre Peninsula to Director General of the South Australian Department of Education. From child to parent to grandparent. Alby had done it all.
I saw that at first hand when I travelled with Alby through the Eyre Peninsula during the Inquiry’s South Australian hearings. He pointed out towns and areas where he had taught or lived. He met the children of fellow teachers from that time who were now themselves teachers. He encountered the grandchildren of children he had taught. Everyone knew Alby. Everyone showed their enormous respect for him. They held him in some kind of awe. And everyone sought and valued his comments and views.
I also learned from Alby in the Inquiry’s deliberations about its findings and recommendations. He always had a valuable comment to make, drawing on his vast knowledge and his long experience in rural education. He sharpened our thinking and our recommendations. His colleagues the Inquiry’s other co-commissioners welcomed his contributions which were always offered modestly, thoughtfully and helpfully.
Alby became a friend to each of us, especially young Tim Roberts, the Victorian co-commissioner, a 17 year old high school student who was at the other end of our age spectrum from Alby. So when I was invited to deliver the 2001 A W Jones Lecture, I did not hesitate for a moment. Indeed I responded immediately and delightedly because it provided an opportunity to express publicly my high regard for the great Alby Jones, my colleague and friend.
The right to education [TOC]
We sought Alby’s assistance, as I have said, because of his knowledge and experience. He gave us that and much more. He also gave us his passionate commitment to the right of every child to the best possible education. That in fact was the basis of our Inquiry, each child’s human right to education. This right is recognised in many international treaties, the most important of which are the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 and the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989. Australia is a party to these treaties and has pledged to respect, protect and fulfil the rights contained in them. One of those rights is the right to education.
The treaties make quite detailed provisions about the nature of the right to education. The international committees established under the treaties to assess performance have summarised these provisions into five basic commitments by states that have ratified the treaties, including Australia.
The Inquiry evaluated the evidence it received against these five criteria.
The fundamental nature of education [TOC]
Not only is education an important human right in itself. It is fundamental to the development of human potential and to full participation in a democratic society. It is also fundamental to the full enjoyment of most other human rights and to the exercise of social responsibilities including respect for human rights. Access to good quality education affects the rights to health, employment and participation in political and cultural life and the exercise of freedoms such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion and belief. That’s why it is recognised as a human right. It is a right to which every person is entitled without discrimination.
Country people are fully aware of this close relationship between education and other rights in the context of rural development. For example, the submission to our Inquiry from the Federal Council of the Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association said
ICPA Australia believes that the prospects for rural development, and thus, the prospects for a better future for Australia’s rural and remote places, are dependent upon access to a broad range of appropriate educational options and activities.
This core significance of education was the second reason the Commission chose rural and remote education as the subject of its Inquiry. Many country towns and regions in Australia are in crisis, confronted by globalisation and the social and economic changes it has brought and will still bring. In these circumstances school education in rural and remote Australia is central to rural well being generally. It provides a way to understand what is happening in all sectors of rural and remote community life and is a focus for recommendations which, if implemented, may help country people to meet the many challenges they face with creative solutions for local conditions addressing local needs. We saw good education as essential if small towns and remote communities are to have a future.
The Inquiry looked into the availability and accessibility of primary and secondary schooling, its quality and the extent to which it included, in an acceptable way, indigenous children, children with disabilities and children from minority language, religious and cultural backgrounds.
What we found [TOC]
Our central finding was that the right to education of many Australian children was violated on the basis of one or more of the five criteria that constitute the right. Many young Australians are unable to enjoy the right to education adequately or equally. Many are unable to enjoy it at all. We found strong evidence that rural and remote children are generally disadvantaged in comparison with their urban counterparts, with the rights of indigenous children and children with disabilities most at risk of all. We concluded that many thousands of children have no effective access to secondary education whatsoever and that tens of thousands more receive inadequate secondary opportunities. We found that hundreds of children face difficulty even in accessing a basic level of primary education and that literacy and numeracy are real and perhaps growing problems in these parts of Australia.
Rural and remote students are less likely to stay on at school after the compulsory years or to finish secondary school. The average Year 12 retention rate for boys is 63% in the capital cities but only 54% in rural and remote areas. For girls it is 74% in the capital cities but only 66% in country towns. Year 12 retention is particularly low in rural and remote parts of the Northern Territory, where the population is predominantly Aboriginal. Only 23% of boys and 25% girls stay on to Year 12.
The retention rates for indigenous students are particularly low. Some 73% of all students stay on to Year 12 but only 32% of indigenous students do. In Western Australia, the retention rate for Aboriginal young people in rural and remote areas is 16%.
Tertiary participation is also lower for rural and remote students: they constitute 30% of the population but only 19% of tertiary students. The imbalance is even worse for isolated students.
There is evidence that rural and remote students have lower school participation generally, less consistent attendance and poorer performances.
The consequences of this situation are stark. It divides our nation. It harms all Australians when some Australians are denied the opportunities and resources they need to achieve their full potential.
I could speak at great length tonight about what we learned, what we were told and what we found. I could but I won’t. I simply refer those who are interested to the Human Rights Commission’s website ( where all the evidence the Inquiry received is publicly available together with all the publications of the Inquiry. Tonight I want to focus not on our findings but on our recommendations.
What we recommended: our first question [TOC]
Our approach to recommendations
When it came to framing our recommendations, we asked ourselves one question: what is necessary to ensure that, by the age of 18, each child in Australia has received the education he or she requires to participate to his or her full potential in the social, economic, political and cultural life of the community? We sought to answer that question. We developed our recommendations with our eyes firmly fixed on the costs implications. We did not want to recommend some prohibitively expensive educational utopia that was incapable of realisation. We wanted to make affordable recommendations that ensured the basic educational entitlement of rural and remote children in Australia. We framed our recommendations not around what was the maximum or even the desirable but what was the bare minimum necessary for compliance with Australia’s human rights commitments.
The Inquiry made 73 recommendations. Together they constitute an affordable blueprint for rural and remote education that meets those human rights commitments. They ranged from general recommendations about the overall direction of government policy in relation to rural and remote education ro very specific recommendations about particularly significant issues. Obviously I cannot deal with all the recommendations tonight. I want to concentrate, therefore, on what I consider the most important, the ones dealing with coordination, cooperation and partnership.
A national strategy for rural and remote education [TOC]
What we saw, what we heard, what we were told and what we read convinced us of the urgent need for a coordinated strategic approach to rural and remote education at every level. It is needed because in most instances we found it was not there. We found gaps in some services, overlaps in others, policies and programs pulling in different directions, resources wasted even when they are scarce. We became convinced that the educational and other needs of children in rural and remote areas could not be met without an integrated approach at each level of government, between different levels of government, across state and territory boundaries and between education sectors, such as government and non-government schools and pre-schools, schools, colleges of technical and further education and universities.
The Inquiry recommended a national strategy for rural and remote education with state and territory components. This would involve a whole of government approach to rural education. The strategy should include not only schools but also the necessary ancillary services, programs and policies, such as telecommunications, transport, subsidies and allowances to families and students, sporting and recreational facilities, teacher training and regional planning. The strategy should be prepared by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, which brings together all federal, state and territory ministers with direct responsibilities in these areas. The strategy should incorporate a whole-of-government approach at each level, ensuring, for example, the coordination of schooling, transport and information technology services, the provision of health and nutrition services so that children are well enough to learn, and so on. The strategy should also identify the necessary resources for its implementation and ensure that those resources are committed by all levels of government rather than becoming another political football or another example of buck-passing.
Collaboration between government and non-government sectors [TOC]
The strategy should also provide for greatly enhanced collaboration across school sectors. We visited many towns where there were both government and non-government (usually Catholic) schools. In most instances both were struggling to meet the needs of their students. Neither had the resources to offer the range of curriculum choice students wanted and needed and neither had the facilities students in cities take for granted. Yet there was rarely any cooperation between them to share resources or facilities.
Take a common example presented to us. Neither school is large enough to employ a full-time music or art or drama teacher and yet cannot attract a specialist teacher to the town for a part-time job. Why don’t they pool the available resources and offer a full-time position between the two schools? Another example. Neither school has the resources to develop a good library and so both have poor libraries. Why don’t they pool resources to establish a common library with up-to-date materials and equipment? There are some excellent examples of local agreements between schools that are doing precisely these things - sharing teachers, sharing facilities, even sharing courses. But they remain few and far between.
We did not recommend, however, a thorough review and rationalisation of the provision of schools in rural areas by both government and non-government systems. That was too hard to contemplate. But if we are truly committed to ensuring the best possible education for country children, then this hard question will have to be addressed by and between the major school systems. They may have to consider completely new ways of providing and running schools, perhaps including merged systems or at least merged schools in some areas.
We did recommend far closer collaboration between government and non-government sectors. The most important place for this to occur, of course, is on the ground, in the towns. But local arrangements need higher level support and encouragement. Non-government school systems, therefore, should also be part of the negotiation of a national strategy and part of its implementation.
Local partnerships [TOC]
The national strategy should provide for and encourage the development of local partnerships across all education sectors with local community and business participation. This has begun nationally in the cooperation between schools and TAFE in vocational education programs. There have been some problems in that. For example, we were told many times that some younger school students, those aged 13 and 14, still have difficulty in accessing TAFE courses. We were told in some areas that TAFE courses can only be made available for those 15 or over. Federal and state authorities denied that that was so. They said TAFE courses could be made available to anyone, provided the resources were available. Clearly many people on the ground were not aware of that and so were unduly restrictive in offering supplementary programs, for example, to junior secondary schools and their students. The Inquiry was concerned by these misconceptions and urged that they be addressed and corrected. I hope that by now they have been.
The school-TAFE partnerships have been well received by rural communities and are very beneficial for students. They need to be supported and extended. But the kinds of partnerships needed in local communities will involve more than that. We saw some excellent examples that provide models for other local community partnerships.
In Walgett in western New South Wales the Community of Schools project has developed new ways of co-ordinating services to provide individualised programs for ‘at-risk’ students and families in the local community, to increase the involvement of the community in addressing educational needs and to provide opportunities for increased participation by young people in vocational education and training. It has also resulted in improvement in school attendance. It develops the relationship between the community of Walgett and the educational institutions at all levels, from primary school through to TAFE and beyond. It assists young teachers who come to town in making contact with the community and in developing and implementing curricula appropriate to all the children in Walgett. It seeks to facilitate a whole of government response to the educational needs of the town. The project has a management committee representing most sectors in the town, including the indigenous community and representative indigenous organisations, the non-Indigenous community, the government sector including the police and the community services department and all educational institutions, including TAFE. The aim is to have all relevant agencies and the community involved in helping young people at risk.
In Bourke, also in western New South Wales, the Joint Schools Council has some similar aims although the participants are only the Bourke education institutions. It has brought together virtually everyone involved in education in Bourke: the pre-school, the government primary school, the Catholic primary school, the secondary school, the TAFE college and the Aboriginal Education Consultative Group. The Council’s stated aim is for every child who leaves school in Bourke to be able go to some sort of work placement or specific training within the region if that is what he or she wants. The Council has received strong support from the local government council, the Bourke Chamber of Commerce and the Cotton Growers Association. The local educators have already have outstanding success in raising literacy and numeracy rates and the local employers have shown their support by providing work experience placements, casual jobs, holiday work and full-time traineeships.
Let me give you one more example, from the Aboriginal community at Nguiu in the Tiwi Islands. The community there was deeply distressed by the high rates of youth suicide, alcohol and other substance abuse, unemployment and general despair. They saw that the only way to address this despair was to ensure futures on the island for young people. So they adopted the 2010 program. The community has identified every job that will be available on the island in 2010 and has set about the task of ensuring that there is a local young person trained for every job by then, in health, education, communications, the community council, the land council and so on. They are doing this with the full involvement of the community and all the agencies on the island: the pre-school, the government school, the Catholic school, the community and land councils, territory and federal government agencies, ATSIC, all of them.
Every child is entitled to an education that develops his or her personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential. This means that local responses to children’s needs are necessary. Local inter-agency partnerships have the best chance of responding to each child’s needs. Local partnerships can also support teachers, especially those who are new to teaching or new to country life. They can develop local leaders and offer familiar role models to local children. And they can assist children into productive work within their own communities. But they must have enough funding, be given decision-making responsibilities and include all relevant groups, especially parents and the children themselves. They must be part of the national strategy so that they receive endorsement and support from all levels of government.
Other recommendations [TOC]
I have not time tonight to discuss the other, more specific recommendations the Inquiry made. I refer you again to the Commission’s published reports, especially Recommendations, which has ben published as a booklet and on the Human Rights Commission’s website. But I do want to refer to two particular issues raised when Alby and I travelled to the Eyre Peninsula here in South Australia.
Parents and teachers expressed their concerns about school transport. They said that often school transport was not available, that it did not guarantee a place for children in non-government schools or TAFE, that it rarely had temperature control and so was very hot in summer and very cold in winter and that it was often unsafe. The Inquiry considered these concerns and made a number of recommendations about school transport. It recommended that each education department should undertake an audit of school transport provision with particular attention to safety and access issues. It also recommended that all children under 18 years should be assured of a place in school transport where provided, regardless of the type of education they were in.
The second issue that was frequently raised was the difficulty schools faced in recruiting and retaining specialist teachers. We were told here as elsewhere that specialist music, drama, art and language teachers were hard to find. But we were also told of difficulties in relation to maths and science teachers and, most surprisingly of all, the difficulty in finding an agriculture teacher in some of the richest agricultural areas of South Australia. Again we made recommendations to address these issues, including in relation to teacher pay and conditions, teacher training and local partnerships.
These two examples are typical of many concerns raised with us by local communities. We have endeavoured in our reports to recognise and respond to these concerns. We consider that the Inquiry’s recommendations can make a difference, that they can contribute substantially to the well-being of children. I said earlier that the Inquiry asked a basic question: what is necessary to ensure that, by the age of 18, each child in Australia has received the education he or she requires to participate to his or her full potential in the social, economic, political and cultural life of the community? Our 73 recommendations answer that question.
Will it be implemented: our second question [TOC]
We posed a second question too: are we as a national community prepared to do whatever is necessary to ensure adequate education for every child in rural and remote Australia? That question has not yet been answered.
Our recommendations report was tabled in federal parliament last June, nine months ago, but there has been no comprehensive response from the federal government. Country Australians are anxious for an answer to that question. And they are not prepared to wait much longer
Rural communities have a dream of good education for their children and young people. Indeed their children and young people have a basic human right to good education. They recognise that this dream and this entitlement will not be realised without a firm national commitment to rural education, with federal leadership and federal resources. That is what they want and expect.
As I visited regional, rural and remote parts of Australia throughout 1998, 1999 and 2000, I heard the concerns of country people. They told me many things, including their concerns about the additional cost of living generally and of petrol prices in particular outside the capital cities. But these issues were subordinate to their far deeper concerns about the education and prospects of their children and young people. Without exception, every community we visited expressed anxiety about whether children had access to the quality education they needed to ensure them a future, hopefully in their own town or region but, failing that, then outside it. They feared that their children were slipping further behind, that their educational opportunities were far less than those of city children, that as result their children could not compete with the skills and qualifications of city children and so they might not have a future as contributing members of the broader Australian community. They expect these issues to be addressed as a top priority, more important by far than a reduction of 1.5 cents in the price of a litre of petrol.
If the education needs of country children are not addressed this year then they may never be addressed. This year is a federal election year and rural and regional issues have a far greater profile than before. Both sides of politics are feeling the weight of rural pressure and are spending or promising to spend significant amounts of taxpayers’ money on meeting rural needs and expectations. There is no need greater than rural education, ensuring that every child in rural and remote areas of Australia has the education he or she requires to participate to his or her full potential in the social, political, economic and cultural life of the local community and the broader national community.
Last year the federal government responded to rural health needs with substantial commitments in the 2000-01 budget. There was little by way of additional funding or new program initiatives to meet rural education needs. This year, the government released its Innovations Statement. Again, there was little for rural education. Yet money can be found when the government wants to find it. If it can find $2.6 billion to reduce petrol prices, then it can find enough to ensure a good education for rural children and young people. With talk of recession in the air the Treasurer is telling us that the federal government does not have additional resources. If so, then it will have to postpone some other, less pressing area of expenditure, like the large increases in defence spending announced last year. Defence can wait; rural education cannot. Money spent on education is money well spent. It is investment in our nation’s future and in the future of our children.
Rural education has to receive top priority for additional expenditure in May’s budget. Country children and young people require it and rural communities expect it. The government controls the purse strings and can act now. If it fails to do so in May, if it rejects the education needs of rural communities, then it in turn will be rejected, overwhelmingly rejected. State governments too should be warned.
The opposition has no capacity to act at once but it can and must make firm promises. It speaks of its commitment to a Knowledge Nation but at this stage there is nothing specific to meet rural education needs. There has to be. Rural communities are looking for the detail, for the specifics of what the opposition will do if elected. There will be electoral reward for a positive response and electoral punishment if these needs are ignored.
The reports of the Human Rights Commission’s National Inquiry into Rural and Remote Education provide a blueprint for the government and the opposition to develop new policies and programs and to find funds for a fairer deal for country children and young people. The many thousands of country people who contributed to those reports and others who share their views expect that blueprint to be endorsed and implemented.
Conclusion [TOC]
As I reflect back on the inquiry process, what strikes me is the number and force of evidence from parents, teachers, departmental officers, community members and students. They express their passionate belief in the importance of education, not because we have internationally agreed human rights treaties which tell us this, but because there is universal understanding of the power and significance of education. Alby Jones shares that understanding. That is why he has dedicated his life to the education of children and young people.
Children themselves have an understanding of how important education is. In Nguiu in the Tiwi Islands, the community of the 2010 program, one young student, 15 year old Trevor, told us
School is about education and education is power for me. And there are a lot of things that I need to know about the whole world. When I leave school I might go to a university in Darwin, I want to be a scientist. In future I hope to be President of the Land Council.
These words give me hope that young people will grasp any opportunity provided to them to exercise their right to education.
I am saddened that so much still needs to be done to give young people these opportunities, especially in remote indigenous communities. I am aware that for children and young people a year or two means much more than it does to adult teachers, policy makers and politicians. Two years have passed since we launched this inquiry in March 1999 and the year 10 students we spoke to then, studying in small schools, by distance education or in boarding schools, have already made their decisions about whether to continue their studies or drop out altogether. Some have already left the education system, by choice or, very often, without choice. For young people like Trevor, the time is now.
[TOC]