A REPORT recently commissioned by the NSW Minister for Education Adrian Piccoli revealed by both international and national standards, NSW has a severe gap in educational outcomes determined by where your family lives – and the problem is worsening.
Further, last year the minister stated in rural NSW there were schools “by almost any measure that are nowhere near what they should be”, and we needed to do something about it.
Acknowledgement of the deep and complex issues in rural and remote education in NSW is the first step toward addressing them, and the NSW government in the past three years has implemented a significant reform agenda involving:
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The NSW government has also reformed funding for early childhood services, schools and vocational training in this term.
Will these reforms arrest and perhaps even reverse the widening disparity of educational outcomes based on where you live?
Isolated Children’s and Parents’ Association NSW (ICPA-NSW) believes the reforms will pull on many of the required levers to enhance education in rural and remote areas, although it has concerns about viability of some services and courses from early childhood right through to tertiary under some of the funding changes.
Many funding and other policies will require further fine tuning in the next year, and the next electoral term.
Fortunately the NSW government has commissioned a Rural and Remote Education Advisory Group to provide advice on many of these issues.
In school transport, ICPA-NSW applauds the NSW government for its implementation of seat belts on dedicated rural school buses.
ICPA-NSW believes further low cost reforms to the Private Vehicle Conveyance Scheme and pre-school travel will make access to education more equitable so we can close the disparities for rural and remote families.
Duncan Taylor is the NSW president of the Isolated Children’s and Parents’ Association (ICPA).
Shifting rural balance
EDUCATION Minister Adrian Piccoli considers last year’s release of the Rural and Remote Education Blueprint for Action a key development in advancing the needs of school teachers and students in the bush.
The blueprint includes plans to attract top staff to rural and remote schools.
Another achievement has been the release of the Review into Agricultural Education and Training in NSW.
Mr Piccoli (pictured at Armidale Community Preschool with Member for Northern Tablelands Adam Marshall) said two key areas addressed by the report were the need for a review into the curriculum, which he said was being addressed by the Board of Studies, as well as the need for the re-establishment of the Murrumbidgee College of Agriculture.
He said a reference group had been appointed to look at this.
Not all of his decisions have been popular, such as small school closures, but Mr Piccoli said “there is nothing new about school closures”.
“I’ve closed two schools in my electorate; they had significantly declining enrolment,” he said.
“Yet this has been going on for decades – we close schools and we open new schools.”
He said given his regional background in Griffith, this had helped bring an understanding of the issues faced by rural and regional schools, with regard to distance, staffing and funding.
“One of the key reforms has been the needs-based funding reforms – that shifts the balance of funding more to rural and remote schools than it has in the past.”
