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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
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EDUCATION (COMPULSORY EDUCATION AGE) AMENDMENT BILL

Committee Stage

In committee.

(Continued from 13 November. Page 1501)

Clauses 2 to 7 passed.

Clause 8.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: Minister, can you explain the purpose of the insertion under clause 8—Amendment of section 74, to insert subsection (2), which reads:

For the purpose of this Part, a reference to participation in an approved learning program includes a reference to attending at the place or places at which the approved learning program is conducted.

Why does that need to be in there? What is the purpose of it?

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: The current act refers to school age children, that is, those children between the ages of 6 and 15, and they enrol at and attend a specific school, because they are within the domain of compulsory schooling. However, the new provision applying to 16 year olds is about compulsory education, and that is a different class of individuals. They need to accommodate their engagement in learning in a variety of settings, not just within a school. They may be involved in a range of attendance and delivery patterns, and the term 'participation' endeavours to cover a range of scenarios.

Approved learning programs are defined within the bill and cover learning that takes place in a range of settings. So, it might be within a school, of course, but also at a university, because some 16 year olds attend university, or a TAFE college. There might be on the job training, as in an apprenticeship, or online training, or within the community. That was the issue that I described yesterday, when I discussed the opportunity, for instance, for accredited CFS type courses, or St John Ambulance, or those sorts of community learning programs. The issue is that it is an approved learning program, and it is different from just attendance within a school, which is the condition of compulsory education between the ages of six and 16.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: That is all very nice, but can the minister tell me how you can participate in the program unless you attend it? I do not see the purpose of the clause, because you have to be there to participate. So, naturally, the definition of 'participation' includes a reference to attending. How else would you participate in CFS training unless you attend? To me, there seems to be no purpose for the inclusion of that clause in the bill: it is stating the obvious. How else do you participate unless you attend?

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: You are participating by your attendance, the member is quite right about that, but your enrolment is in an institution, and you might go out to the TAFE or to on-the-job training or to a school-based apprenticeship or online. So, there is a different definition, because there are two categories of individuals. The whole point of this act is that you have to prove that you are attending, but each provider determines what sort of attendance is required and where it should occur. So, it is a more flexible process.

It is quite clear that the intent of this bill is to create two classes of individuals: a compulsory school age child between the ages of six and their 16th birthday and someone involved in engagement in a compulsory education program (or an approved learning program, as it is called), between the ages of the 16th and the 17th birthday. The major criticism in some countries (and there has been some in Australia) of lifting the school leaving age per se is that it is locking children into school who may not wish to be there, who may have become somewhat disengaged, and the only option we have is to be more flexible—retain them as an engaged child or young people, but give them different options. This is a way of developing youth engagement so they do not drop out. We do not want them to be out of school, out of work or out of training because, inevitably, that means putting them at risk; having them at home on the sofa watching television, not doing anything useful. This is about engagement and, therefore, it is not the same as compulsory schooling.

Clause passed.

Clause 9.

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: I move:

Page 5, line 18—

After 'section 75A' insert:

and unless the child is enrolled at a non-government school

As members know, we have had significant amounts of consultation with the stakeholders, and we have tried on all levels to accommodate their wishes. One of the areas that has arisen as a minor concern (not for the Catholic sector, I might add, and not for any of the other stakeholder groups), is that the Association of Independent Schools of South Australia was concerned about the capacity of the Director-General, under subsection 75E(1) to direct a child to go to a particular school within a zone (I should say that the Catholic sector was less concerned about it than AISSA).

There has never been any intention to direct children, under this subsection, to zone them into private schools. That was not the intention. It has never been used in that way previously and, whilst we have gone to some length to reassure the sectors that that would not be the case, we have drafted an amendment that will allow those sectors to be comfortable in the fact that we will not try to zone them, which seems a reasonable thing to do—not that we would ever want to. So, it allows for the school zones to be prescribed in regulation for government schools, and it fixes what is in some regards sloppy wording, I guess, in the 1986 bill with respect to zones. Whilst we have given assurances, it is a very small amendment, and it will just give comfort to the non-government sector. So, I think it is a reasonable thing to do.

Mr HANNA: My question relates to subclause 9(2) and the offence of (if I can paraphrase it) not ensuring that a child is enrolled. The question that I raised in my second reading speech was: what is the education department policy in relation to prosecution? Has there ever been a prosecution? Who should be prosecuted, and when should they be prosecuted?

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: First, as I said earlier, it is important to understand the compulsory schooling child and the compulsory education young person. At the age of 16, I think it would be punitive to compel and prosecute people to go to school. They are young people who make choices. We would like to have choices and flexibility which would engage young people, but if a child is in trouble for a range of reasons and is disengaging, probably prosecution is not a good option. So, no prosecution or fine is attached to the compulsory education age from 16 to 17.

However, in relation to the younger children, that is, the child of compulsory schooling age (6 to 16th birthday), at the request, I must say, of the parent groups and of the consultation process, there was a general view that $100 was insufficient. We took the advice of the parent groups and suggested that, under the Education Act, there should be the power within the courts in prosecution to extend the fine to $500. The honourable member asked how often it occurs. Very rarely. I must say that some of the children who are poor attendees might be unregistered, home-schooled children—some children who have dropped out of the non-government sector, so it is not a homogeneous group.

For some of those children it is difficult always for the Education Department to recognise that they have dropped out of education. At least with our compulsory education package there is an obligation by the providers to tell us that the child has dropped out. Also, then, a series of departmental officers will be able to seek them out, counsel them and try to re-engage them. That power can be delegated to other education organisations. We would delegate it, for instance, to the Catholic education sector or to the independent sector.

Our argument would be that a child who is enrolled in a non-government school—where they might have paid fees—also has the right to be educated, and there should be some follow up in that system as well.

Mr HANNA: The minister has gone some way to answering my next question, which is: what do you do with a 16 year old who simply does not want to comply with the legislation; who would rather covertly pursue criminal means of surviving; who does not want to live at home; who does not want to attend school; and who does not want to attend the kind of employment that is envisaged under the act? Will any additional support structures be in place to lead these people to a better path?

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: Thank you; that is indeed a good question. We have benefited from four or five years of re-engagement programs and social inclusion school retention and action plans around attendance and re-engagement. As the honourable member would know, those programs have been spread across a spectrum of departments and activities. We have some run by police and some run by corrections, and we have activities organised by Families and Communities. We have a focus on the most at-risk children in that group—the most difficult ones to re-engage.

What has impressed me has been the effectiveness and the success rate in these re-engagement strategies. From memory, our School Retention Action Plan Group is getting close to 80 per cent re-engagement for the most difficult children. When I say 're-engage', they do not go straight to five difficult SACE subjects. When I say 're-engagement', they go back into schooling, they go back into training and they might get into apprenticeships. Of course, there will be a spectrum.

Some members opposite were confused by the numbers and whether there were 1,200 or 2,000 students whom we might engage in this process. We think that the number will be 1,200 but, within that spectrum, there will be the relatively easy to manage young people who just need to be told they should be at school and they will stay on for an extra year. They will probably re-engage in routine school work, Monday to Friday, and not be much different from the majority of other young people. We would, of course, be funding them through our normal per capita funding, and we recognise that there will be more children in schools and there will be more per capita funding. We appreciate that.

Other children will be at risk, and they would benefit from the mentoring programs that we have had before and this range of very complex programs. At the easy end—the low-hanging fruit, if you like—of the school retention engagement spectrum, some young people will be just teetering. One of our programs for year 12 students identified the cohort who dropped out between Easter and August.

To have almost 1,000 young people in South Australia dropping out of school between Easter and August is almost unthinkable, because these children are not highly at risk. They are not recidivists, they are not drug abusers and they are not homeless. They do not have any of the major risk factors. Generally, they are good kids who made it to year 12 but who teeter. They teeter on the brink very often because they fall behind with their assignments, they have stress from working too many hours or they might have domestic issues. There are a range of issues in young people's lives.

The experience we have gained from them through our retention activity over the last five years has been that they require close mentoring. Our program worked with just over 800 of them and resulted in more than 50 per cent completing SACE. The rest got into jobs, apprenticeships and TAFE courses. Out of that whole cohort I think we lost fewer than 10. With very little activity, those who are at the easier end can be re-engaged.

At the more extreme end, those children have walked with their feet already. They have been involved in a range of life experiences which are stressful and risky and which range from homelessness to drug abuse—many maybe foster children—and they are really disengaged. For those children we have a range of packages. Of course, we have specific programs for specific problems. For instance, we have had specific programs for young mothers to help them re-engage, and some of that is done through our children's centres. In fact, Cafe Enfield has a particularly good program called Cafe SACE, where young mothers learn parenting skills, learn to trust the carers in the childcare centre and then get bussed into a school to re-engage.

That is a really inspirational program, because those young people complete SACE. In fact, I celebrated with seven or so last year who had gone back to school to complete SACE. Those programs are more difficult. Very often we must use a different funding package because the children are not at school full time. If, through this program, we register them, we recognise that we must use a very flexible funding model so that we have the funding that partly goes to the school, because it has the duty of care and it must monitor and follow the children, the young people; but also giving money to some registered training organisations and some TAFEs. Some of them involve police support and help, as well.

I think the program that we ran very closely with the police around the Port Pirie area had a profound impact because it not only impacted on the lives of the young people involved but also dramatically decreased the rate of petty crime in the neighbourhood, because they were engaged and actively doing something productive. I am trying to say that there is a spectrum. We have the experience now to know how to target each of the groups.

The very easy ones will just slot into the system; slightly more risky ones will have mentoring and support; and then the high risk end will be more challenging, I admit. Some of them will have exited from the juvenile justice system and some of them will need very significant literacy and numeracy support, but in that respect I think our year 9 testing will also be helpful, because we will be providing personal learning programs for them.

I am very optimistic that, with our more flexible SACE, our trade schools, our experience with social inclusion, our flexible funding models and the experience we have gained with a whole range of cohorts over the past five years, what we will offer will be something different, because if we keep going with what we are offering so far, we will get the same results, and that is just not good enough. I meant to tell the honourable member about the numbers. I understand that the statistics are very difficult around this because you have to break up the cohorts.

There are 18,000 16 year olds in school and 2,000 of those are either not in school or part-time at school. Of the 2,000 who are not at school, we believe that 800 to 1,000 are in the VET sector, which brings us back to about 1,000 to 1,200 who are our target group, whom we want to re-engage because they are the ones at risk, who are not at school, who are not at work and who are not in training. If the honourable member thinks that the numbers are a little rubbery, the reality is that we do not have a really effective database.

Mr Hanna: That's a worry, isn't it?

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: It is a worry. What we have done is to introduce a unique identifier so that each child who enters the education system receives a number, and we then record their achievements, their attendance and all the good and bad things that occur to them, not because we want to be big brotherish but, over time, we want to track these children more accurately. Certainly with the new SACE system, we will have more power to do that. Eventually, if we could track them through to university and the VET programs, we would really be able to identify young people at risk. The data is the key to achieving success in these areas, and that is why we have made such an effort to ensure that we have the capacity to collect data and to track young people, because the honourable member is absolutely right: you have to be able to measure it, if you are to manage it.

Mr HANNA: I hope that it has not occurred to anyone in the education department to seek fee recovery by selling that sort of data to potential employers—and I say that facetiously. On another topic, what is the minister doing to clarify the apparently common misconception that we need stand-alone trade schools in order to provide vocational training to our young people? I say that given my knowledge of programs such as the Pathways program at Seaview High School and the vocational training that they are doing at Hamilton Secondary College. In other words, so much vocational training is being done in the best of our public secondary schools, why is there this constant demand from members of parliament—even ministers—that we need more trade schools like we had in the 1950s? Why can we not enhance what we are already doing in our public schools?

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: That is not directly related to the bill, but the honourable member will understand that this government believes in a more modern version of the trade school, not going back to the future. That is because the old trade schools served us well but they had a limited suite of offerings. There has been exponential growth in industry sectors and job opportunities which was not there in the past. They might be in hospitality, catering, IT, engineering, manufacturing—a whole range of opportunities. It is barely possible for any stand-alone institution to manage to cater for all those skills. Our government has chosen to look at trade schools for the future under a hub model where groups of schools work together.

There is a central area, but the most important issues are counselling and brokering, because with the massive number of job opportunities, you have to ensure that people get into the right career path. We will have job brokers and links with local businesses. There will be opportunity in the areas around the air warfare destroyers and ship building. There will be mining in the Mid North because there is a massive job boom in those areas. We will have to cater in other schools for the electronic industries, health professionals and a whole range of specialist areas. We believe that young people are best served based in a genuine school. The reason for that, as the member for Unley said yesterday, is that no-one has the same career for life, and whilst you might be a tradesman in one part of your career, you might go on to train through a diploma course or university later on.

We believe that staying at school to get a SACE gives you that flexibility and that is why we prefer to have our young people based in a school, involved in an approved learning program if they are moving out of the school and gaining the flexibility that a SACE will give them in terms of a TER and moving on in the future.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: I want to ask some questions in relation to clause 9, particularly the section dealing with section 75(7)(b) which talks about the prescribed rules. This probably goes to the nub of the bill, to a degree. I want to get some clarity, minister, as to what is intended to be defined as full-time. Yesterday, the minister used a figure of 25 hours, which I took to be 25 hours in the concept of the volunteering aspect that she mentioned. Can the minister confirm to the committee that it is 25 hours of volunteering, whether that be for the CFS, St Johns, or whatever is the accredited course? Is it full-time work? Will you classify 25 hours as full-time? If 25 hours is going to be the magic figure, why not put it in the bill itself rather than leave it open as prescribed in some rule?

Also, can the minister expand on how this is going to work in relation to someone who at the start of the year is employed and then becomes unemployed? I assume they will get a tap on the shoulder and say, 'Now you are unemployed, come back into the system.' Can the minister also confirm for me what happens with welfare payments?

If I am getting unemployment benefits at age 16, under this bill I will now be required not to be unemployed, therefore, I assume I will lose my unemployment benefits as a result of this bill because I would be breaking the law by not being in an approved learning program. I assume that the minister has consulted the commonwealth on this. What happens to the welfare payment of a 16 year old who is currently unemployed and who is getting a welfare payment when this bill becomes law, because then they will have a legal obligation to be in an approved learning program?

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: I think that the member's question is in two parts. When we talk about the number of hours, it depends on the program. As in any VET course, there are a number of hours you take to do something. There will be no prescription within the act relating to the course. In relation to the number of hours, we based our decision on advice from the interagency advisory group as to what full-time education might be. A young person who is of compulsory education age will be considered to be full-time when he or she is enrolled and participating in an approved learning program, and that is deemed by the provider to be full time. So, the provider decides.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: Minister, just to clarify that, I understand the university course. I remember doing a full-time course at 12 hours a week. I understand TAFE courses—

Ms Fox interjecting:

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: I did one. I understand TAFE courses and they define it as full time. I understand the VET courses; they will define what is full time. I understand the courses. Go to the question of employment. Who defines what is full-time employment? Is that up to the employer or is there a definition that is adopted or that is going to be adopted? At what point does someone become full-time employed for the purposes of this act?

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: The issue of employment relates to an exemption because every one of the age of 16—that is, someone who is deemed to be of compulsory education age—should be enrolled for an approved learning program through, say, a school, although they might be going to TAFE or all sorts of other things, but they can get an exemption from schooling. For instance, you might have completed your SACE. Clearly, if you have a SACE completion and a TER, we are not going to compel you to go back to school to be involved in another program because you might be going to university.

Similarly, if you go to university, you will not be compelled under this legislation either. Clearly, if you have a job and any 16 year old who is not going to participate full time in an approved learning program will need a partial or full exemption. A full exemption will mean that they are going to university or doing some meaningful employment. But the circumstances for which an exemption will apply will include full-time work with a minimum of 25 hours—

The Hon. I.F. Evans: Sorry, I missed that.

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: A minimum of 25 hours a week.

The Hon. I.F. Evans: Full-time work?

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: Yes. Grounds for exemption would include individual personal circumstances which may mean that a child is required to work part time to support the family or have carer’s responsibilities which prevent them from full-time participation in an approved learning program or they may be involved in home schooling. We have exemptions that we believe should cover every reasonable eventuality, but there is the capacity to apply for an extension.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: Just to clarify it, the word 'employ' does not include looking for work, and can you please clarify for me my previous question on the matter of what happens to their social security payment in the event of this bill becoming law? Will 16 year olds who are currently unemployed and receiving unemployment benefits lose their unemployment benefits because they have an obligation under this bill to be in an approved learning program?

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: My advice is that Centrelink has advised us that they will not be affected.

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: Will the minister table that advice for the purposes of the house? You can send it to me in between houses.

The Hon. J.D. LOMAX-SMITH: We are happy to table that.

Amendment carried; clause as amended passed.

Remaining clauses (10 to 19) and title passed.

Bill reported with amendment.

Third Reading

Bill read a third time and passed.

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