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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-06-17 Daily Xml
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PUBLIC SCHOOLS, MANAGEMENT OF DISRUPTIVE CHILDREN

Mr HANNA (Mitchell) (11:00): I move:

That this house establish a select committee to inquire into the management of children who behave disruptively in our public school system; and in particular, whether–

(a) Flexible Learning Options (FLO) are adequately funded;

(b) behavioural management learning centres are adequately resourced;

(c) coordination can be improved between the Department of Education and Children's Services and other agencies which support troubled families; and

(d) any other relevant matter.

It is a well recognised problem in our society that we have a number of troubled families and, in particular, that means that we have a number of troubled children. I have heard people discuss this issue and call children 'bad', referring to children who are 'trouble'. However, the way I prefer to think of it is that these are troubled children, and their internal conflict and deprivation causes them to act out behaviour that is socially unacceptable.

Of course, in our schooling system, we have something of a blur between our private and public system. We have a private school system that is very well subsidised by the public, but the great advantage that private schools have is that they are able to pick and choose whom they accept as students. That is not the case with our public schools, and so it is fair to say that there is probably a greater proportion of troubled students in our public school system compared with our private school system.

Of those students, in many cases we are talking about children from families where there may be only one parent, where there may be drug addiction, where there may be child abuse, where there may be violence in the home and, not unnaturally, this causes problems for the child interacting with others at school. There is also ample evidence to suggest that those who are abused or bullied at home as children are going to repeat that behaviour as they grow up with others as victims. So, for a whole range of reasons, we have a number of students in our public school system who need extra support to overcome these terrible disadvantages.

Just to give members an idea of the extent of the problem, we are basically using suspensions—that is, temporary exclusion from school—to the extent of about 4,500 a year. In relation to exclusions—that is, banning children from a particular school for an extended period of time—we are talking about hundreds of cases each year. Those children are not just put out onto the streets. Our system has a good answer for them in that there are various behavioural learning centres around town. These are schools that take on these challenged students for a short period of time, often for the remainder of a term, if they are excluded from their local school.

There is the Bowden-Brompton Community School, which has three campus, and that school provides an alternative secondary school program. There is also the Adolescent Service at the Enfield campus, and there are three metropolitan learning centres. I am using language the department uses, but what it amounts to is that there are a number of sites around town where these troubled students can be sent if they are not able to keep their behaviour in their local school within the bounds of acceptable behaviour. Most of the services are available from the city to the north. There are not many facilities in the south. There is one, I believe, at Cowandilla and one at Christies Beach, but I think the south is hard done by when it comes to the provision of these services.

Many of these children come from homes where there is poverty or neglect of the children in the home. If these children are excluded from the local school, they may have to travel many, many miles to get to one of these behavioural learning centres. The department pays for children to catch public transport, and it might be, for example, from Mount Barker to Cowandilla. So, you might have someone who has trouble at their local school being paid by the department to go more than across town—perhaps an hour and a half in travelling time—to get to a school that will support them better. That to me says that there is a need for more of these centres so that it is easier for troubled children to have access if they need that sort of support.

Incidentally, there is an ideal site in the electorate of Mitchell, in the suburb of Dover Gardens, where the Dover Gardens Primary School has just closed. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the buildings, and there is a beautiful oval there. I would hate to see that covered in townhouses when there is a crying need for more behavioural management learning centres like the ones I am describing.

The centres I have mentioned are full, and there are waiting lists. Of course, if you are talking about a place for a student to go for the remainder of the term once they are excluded from their local school, you actually need something that is available there and then. There is no point in having a waiting list, or you end up with young people being at home.

We had a case earlier this year of a child who died. Without going into all the details, this child was about 11 years old and suffered from neglect from the adults in his life. He had attended only a couple of weeks out of the several months of schooling he was meant to be attending prior to the end of his life. There is a suggestion in that case that there is a need for more available places and more support to enable troubled children to get to some sort of schooling and, in a case like that, it is important for it to be one of these specialist centres that deals with those who require behavioural management. There are higher teacher to student ratios than in normal schools, as one would expect, and the teachers become specialists in the field of dealing with difficult children and adolescents.

The need, I believe, is quite clear. There is scope for expanding the number of centres in that there are empty facilities at present that could be used for the purpose. There is an urgent need, because there are waiting lists at these centres and, as I have indicated, there are hundreds of cases each year that require these services. That said, the vast majority of our 170,000 students attending about 600 state schools get by without any problem, but we do need to cater for those who might be left behind. The social consequences and the consequences for our criminal justice system and the safety of our community are obvious.

I therefore commend this motion to the house because there are a number of ways we can better care for these students. I have indicated that this could be done through the behavioural management learning centres within existing high schools. There is a funding program called Flexible Learning Options, and this allows for students who have difficulty with regular academic work to undergo practical training, for example, in car maintenance or life skills such as cooking, etc., and students sometimes respond very well to these practical programs rather than the regular academic curriculum.

There is also a suggestion in the motion I have put to the house today that there could be better coordination between the Department of Education and Families SA, because the problems we are dealing with here need to be dealt with in a holistic way. We can deal with the child from approximately nine to three Monday to Friday, but each of those children has a story to tell about their family and the support that their mother or father, or both, need to be able to bring up that child in a healthy and encouraging way.

There are a host of issues, I believe, once we start to dig beneath the surface, and that needs to be explored in a committee. From the people that I have spoken to in my community, there is intense interest in how we can better deal with those troubled children who cannot behave themselves in a socially acceptable way within our schools.

There is a very strong passion in the community that those children at school who are willing and able to learn should be able to get on with it in the mainstream without the disruption caused by those children who cannot help themselves, to some extent. It is an appropriate matter for a parliamentary committee to examine, and I commend the motion to the house.

The Hon. R.B. SUCH (Fisher) (11:12): I strongly support this motion moved by the member for Mitchell. I think select committees—and I have said this before—perform a very useful role in the parliament, and I think that we should avail ourselves of the opportunity to conduct thorough reviews of issues and matters that are of concern in the wider community.

The first point that needs to be made is that public schools, and also independent and Catholic schools, reflect the wider community. So, it is not surprising that if behavioural standards have changed in the wider community then that will be reflected in the public school system, as well as in the independent and Catholic systems.

Many of the problems in our school system that now confront teachers and students who want to learn arise from the fact that we have, in my view, often poor parenting in the community. It is not a matter of blaming parents, it is more a question of: what can we do about it to ensure that children, in or out of school, have values which are respectful of themselves, others and so on?

Sadly, I think it is very obvious that many children are coming through the system and have not experienced boundaries and who have no guidance in terms of what they should or should not do, and that is compounded when you look at the individual students and see that many of them have psychological and, in some cases, psychiatric problems. That is particularly the case at secondary school, where some students are experiencing not just depression but other mental disorders of one kind or another. So, all those things need to be addressed.

It is often useful—and the same with the prison system—not to focus just on the ones who are seen as misbehaving but also to look at the ones who do not end up in prison or cause trouble at school. If you look at why that is, it gives some indication of what needs to be done to ensure that the children in our schools are all able to cooperate within the school system and benefit from what is available to them by way of education.

When the Hon. Lea Stevens was minister for health she did something of lasting value—and I have always commended her for it—namely, the postnatal visit program. I have always argued strongly that that concept ought to be extended further so that not just with the postnatal phase but with children up to age three or five years there is a visit to the home environment to look at how the children are being cared for, how they are developing and so on, because the key to a lot of these things, which becomes manifest in poor behaviour if you do not deal with it early, is what happens in the critical early years. By the time a child is three or four years old, many behavioural patterns are already well and truly set. The key message needs to be early intervention.

I have indicated before that one of my neighbours was a junior primary teacher some years ago. She taught the Truro murderer and Brooklyn Park murderer (she did not teach them how to kill!), and it was obvious to her at junior primary level that those individuals had severe behavioural problems—putting faeces on the wall, and so on, which is a classic sign of a dysfunctional person. I refer to the tragic case of Martin Bryant, who exhibited dysfunctional behaviour early on at school and elsewhere and it was never addressed, partly because one family member did not want it addressed. He then goes on to kill many people. They are the extreme end of the problem we are talking about, but if you do not deal with these things early, where you observe cruelty to animals and others, and young people do not develop an empathy, you will have behavioural issues, including disruption in school, etc., reflected throughout that person's life.

We need early intervention as part and parcel of ascertaining the issues at the school level, from junior primary through to secondary. The assumption that by the time you get to high school all is well is not the case, because that is when a lot of the problems manifest themselves. You have to deal with learning disabilities. If someone cannot understand what is being taught, they will muck around. If the curriculum is not relevant they will muck around and truant. All those issues are interrelated. It is not simply a question of putting children in a special school. We use the term 'special school' here, as members know, for those who have an intellectual disability, but putting a child in a behaviour management school is trying to deal with a problem that probably should have been dealt with much earlier.

If we look at the strategy schools adopt (they do not have many options, because we do not allow schools in the state system to have much local autonomy), all they can do is suspend and exclude. What does that do? It does not solve the problem. You have simply got the child out of the classroom and the school. You have not addressed the underlying issues, but made them worse because the child is then released into the community, often unsupervised if the parent or parents work, and you have made the situation worse. I have been dealing with a lad who is now in his early teens, but he came to me years ago through his grandparents—it is often the grandparents who seek to intervene.

I must say that the Hon. Trish White, who was then the minister for education, went out of her way to try to assist with this issue. I will just use his first name, Joshua. At one stage during the year he missed 22 weeks of school because his mother basically dumped him at the FAYS or FACS office when he was very young; I think he was two or three. She just dumped him and said, 'I don't want you anymore.' That would be pretty devastating for anyone. If a female teacher (and I am not picking on them because they are female) was perceived by him to be rejecting him, that would cause a third world war.

Someone like Joshua needed special attention and, sadly, he did not necessarily get that. Other children, not deliberately being cruel, would say at a footy match, 'Where's your dad? Why doesn't your dad come along?' That would trigger the kid off and he would end up having a fight with the other kids. What you often need with these kids is specific case management to deal with the issues. To be rejected by a parent when you are, say, two or three and dumped and never to see your mother again, or your father, is pretty shattering.

It is not surprising that that child will not be an A-grade scholar. Even though the child is now in his early teens, and, as I say, with some positive help from the then minister for education, the Hon. Trish White, hopefully he will come good in the end, particularly through getting him into sporting programs. Often you find with these characters that they are not actively involved in team sports, and that can be a way of giving them a sense of linkage with the community and to help them focus on other issues. This issue will not be resolved simply by creating more centres.

The introduction of more technical studies will help students who are not so interested in the academic stream and that, I think, is a worthwhile thing that is happening at the moment. In essence, I support this measure. It is a very complex matter. It cannot be resolved overnight, but I think we can do better. That is why I urge the government and the opposition to support this motion, because I think we can do a lot better in relation to ensuring that our children learn and are happy at school and become worthwhile citizens who feel good about themselves and who can achieve in life.

Mr PISONI (Unley) (11:22): I support the motion. We have had success previously with select committees formed in the lower house. I was in the fortunate position where I was able to sit on the select committee into work-life balance. I think that was a great way to examine people's lives and the difficulties that parents may have, whether they be single parents or from different socioeconomic backgrounds in terms of managing the demands of their working life. I think that it was a very well regarded select committee, and I would very much like to see another select committee established so that we can inquire into these issues, such as flexible learning options and ensuring that they are adequately funded.

The first thing we need to do is to establish exactly how they are funded, when they are funded and why they are funded and review that situation. I think it is fair to say that we have an increasing number of reported autism cases in children these days, whether it is because we are more aware that children can have these problems or whether there are other things that are happening in our environment that are making that change; I suspect it is probably a bit of both. It is a very frustrating situation for a parent to be in.

I had the good fortune to visit the Woodville Special School Council last week. I must say that I and a parent who had just moved from interstate and who had a child at that school were very surprised to hear that there is a waiting list to get a child into a special school such as that. It was something that she had never heard of, coming from the Eastern States: a waiting list for a special school for children.

With respect to behavioural management learning centres, I note that the new Liberal government of Western Australia has announced that it will be building six new centres for students who physically and verbally abuse teachers. The point was raised by the member for Fisher that it is all very well for the independent and Catholic systems, because they can expel students. And where do expelled students go? They end up in the government system. So, we need some way of managing that situation, even more so now that we have seen the school leaving age increase from 15 to 16 and now to 17, and young people must be learning or earning.

It is becoming more evident to me that we are failing to engage those 16 to 17 year olds who have struggled with school from the very beginning; those who have missed out on the extra help they may have needed in early childhood with reading and writing, numeracy and literacy, and so forth; and those whose parents might not be engaged in the education of their children. We all know how important it is for parents and families to be engaged in the education of their children.

So, we have a two-pronged situation with respect to the disruptive child, and I think it is fair to say that it is usually through no fault of their own: it is a combination of issues. Some would suggest that they are a victim of society, but they are certainly a victim of the parenting they may have experienced or, alternatively, the education process, where they have been able to move from year to year without learning the basics of reading and writing.

I have a lot of sympathy for students who have finished high school but still struggle with the basics of numeracy and literacy. However, generally, if their energies are channelled into something that they can turn into a hobby, a part-time job, an experience or a skill gathering exercise, those types of people can be rescued and they will go on to become very good members of the community.

The alternative to not dealing with it at those sorts of ages is that they end up becoming a menace to society. They are not able to recognise an opportunity when it is there. They see others taking up opportunities and cannot understand why others are getting ahead but they are not, so they become resentful. Generally, it starts with things such as hate crimes or opportunistic crimes where, if someone has something and they want it, they will just take it.

It is very important that we deal with these kids when they have reached that stage of their education, in particular, so that we can channel them in a certain direction. I favour the trades. I think that the apprenticeship system is a great system for kids who are struggling with school. There are some trades where employers want very good results in maths and English, for example, but there are many other trades out there where they will learn those sorts of things on the job, and we should be encouraging those kids who are struggling to move down that path. And who knows—they may even be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow once they get over this blimp in their lives and their education.

I would like to see a select committee set up, and I would be very keen to be a part of that select committee if it received the support of the government and was established. It would be great for this measure to receive bipartisan support. I am a very strong supporter of the public education system. I chose to send my kids to public sector schools from the time they attended primary school, and they are now both in high school.

Some frustrations arise in the public education system and I hope that one day I might be in a position to deal with those issues. Generally, we should direct resources to areas to help identify behavioural management early. This is the argument I have been running with the super schools program, where there are larger schools so, consequently, less of an opportunity for individualised care and recognition of children's behaviour if it is antisocial or if a child is showing signs of being disengaged.

It is interesting that at a time when the rest of the world is moving away from a super schools concept this government is looking at selling schools and amalgamating schools to make them bigger. It has been a failed experiment in the United States and the UK. In fact, they are moving back to community-based schools. Bill and Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation have donated $2 billion towards establishing community-based schools and closing down larger schools, particularly in urban areas of Chicago. Even the state of Utah is doing the same. Utah is not a large state. You would not compare it with New York or California, but even in Utah the experiment of the super schools has failed and they are winding them back to smaller schools.

An interesting statistic in a report released in 2002 by the Utah Department of Education indicates that in areas where there were large super schools there was a large growth in non-government schools. Parents were choosing not to send their children to the super schools but, rather, to send them to independent schools, even though it would cost them money to do that. They simply chose not to use the super schools.

Maybe that is the intention of this government. Maybe it wants fewer children in the public sector and that is why it is pushing for super schools, but it is disappointing that we are not seeing appropriate consultation and looking at flexible learning outcomes and other models that super schools might use. We have not been told about the education process but, rather, we have just been shown pictures of buildings. That is a confusing issue for parents. They want education outcomes, yet the minister keeps talking about buildings.

Debate adjourned on motion of Mrs Geraghty.

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