Social Development Committee: Funding for Children and Students with Additional Learning Needs in Public Schools and Preschools Petition

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (19:55): I move:

That the final report of the committee, entitled 'Inquiry into petition No. 96 of 2021: funding for children and students with additional learning needs in public schools and preschools', be noted.

The committee received a petition No. 96 on a motion of Mr Blair Boyer MP in September 2022. The committee was considered best placed to undertake the inquiry and notes the passage of time since the petition was first tabled in the parliament in 2021. The committee thanks all those who submitted evidence to the inquiry. The petition requested the government increase fundings to schools and preschools to provide immediate support and intervention for children in schools with additional learning needs through the employment of more support staff, specialists, allied health and mental health professionals and teachers.

The Inclusive Education Support Program provides grant funding for the state's public school system to support children and students who have additional learning needs to achieve in mainstream and specialist schools. State schools and preschools received proportional site grant funding based on several factors, such as school location and student numbers. They also receive individualised funding for children and students identified as having greater learning needs.

The evidence to this inquiry identified there were repeated and overlapping concerns about the different grant funding streams and the issues the different funding streams raise in daily school routine. The concerns are complex and multifaceted and during the time the committee was undertaking its inquiry, the government agreed to a new $1.6 billion enterprise agreement that takes into account salary and workload teachers face along with reforms to the IESP.

This agreement may go some way to resolving some of the concerns presented to the committee. Nonetheless, the committee's inquiry has identified in broad terms that there is an urgent need for the government to:

ease the administrative burden placed on teachers to complete funding applications;

ensure the department provides timely learning supports and adequate funding hours to all children and students where it is needed;

ensure the IESP and individualised funding grants have flexibility and are adequately funded;

invest more in early childhood education teachers;

increase recruitment of specialists and school supports;

ensure student support officers are appropriately trained to carry out their duties;

expand the autism inclusion teachers program to secondary schools;

demonstrate inclusive whole-of-school evidence-based approaches to the provision of learning supports;

review departmental policies to ensure proper supports are provided to children and students with undiagnosed disability or learning difficulties that do not meet the current definitions of disability; and, finally

continue working to include trauma-informed practice for teachers and educators along with the broader mental health and wellbeing support.

The committee has made 23 recommendations that address these matters along with others identified during the inquiry. The committee notes the initiatives that have been commenced by the department to improve the opportunities of children and students in government schools who have additional learning needs.

The department's evidence shows that during the 2022 school year, over 17,000 students were provided nearly 24,000 specialist services with funding allocated out of the department's annual budget. More than 5,000 of these students were funded under the autism spectrum primary disability category.

The department advised that the government is investing $50 million over four years to enable 100 FTE mental health and learning support specialists across 28 sites to provide more support to students across South Australia. It is also ensuring that the AITs will be available in schools that offer reception to year 12 and the program will be allocated $28.8 million over the forward estimates, yet the evidence showed the waiting times for access to some departmental specialists for funding application assessments could take up to 30 months.

The committee learned there were only 25 FTE occupational therapists across the South Australian government school network and even fewer trained teachers for students with hearing loss. The evidence suggests there is a need for further investment in the number of school-based psychologists and for trained teachers of the deaf and speech pathologists. The evidence further shows a multidisciplinary suite of support professionals is best practice in providing children and students with the tools to achieve, and there is a need to invest in critical services within the education setting, particularly during the child's early years.

Greater funding is also needed to support the increased number of children and students with mental health concerns and mental illness, for students with medical illnesses that require complex care, and for children and students who have increased exposure to adverse childhood experiences. This was evidenced to be especially true for schools in the lower socio-economic areas, where children and their families face additional challenges. The committee learned that this is also the case for vulnerable children and students and for a variety of reasons include those who are on temporary visas who live in rural areas or who are of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background.

To address these additional challenges, the committee has recommended the department engage across government agencies to identify the additional learning needs of children before preschool and again before primary school to ensure family support is provided. The department advised it has rolled out several schoolwide initiatives, including the 'One in Four' reform, the student engagement reform, and the positive behaviour for learning framework, which is an evidence-based framework to promote improved behaviour and learning outcomes for students.

The committee commends the department on these projects; however, it has also received evidence that some students experiencing extreme behaviours, engagement or learning issues may not receive more than two to three hours per week of one-to-one support. The committee has recommended the department expedite and finish implementing the above-mentioned reforms and provide a report to the parliament.

The recommendations of submissions and witnesses to the inquiry reflect some of the findings of several previous inquiries into the state's education system, including the 2023 Royal Commission into Early Childhood Education and Care, the 2020 Graham inquiry into suspension exclusion and expulsion processes, and the 2022 University of South Australia study, 'Teachers at breaking point'.

The committee found, along with the department's already commenced programs for improvement, there are further actions the government may take to make the state's public schools more accessible and equitable and to support teachers to continue providing South Australian children and students with world-class education, and these are addressed in the report recommendations. I commend the report to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. B.R. Hood.