Schools in rural parts of NSW wait four months for even basic repairs of broken windows and rely on retired teachers to cover for sick leave because there are not enough staff.
Permanent teacher vacancies have surged in remote schools in the past few years, while HSC results for rural teenagers remain well behind city students, and fewer of them are finishing year 12.
Education Minister Prue Car said the program was nothing but spin.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
A program devised by Department of Education bureaucrats to reverse those trends has been deemed likely to fail because no extra resources were allocated to the strategy, a NSW auditor-general’s report released on Thursday found.
Education Minister Prue Car said the current program will not be replaced, but has ordered department staff to “look at ways that we can immediately get some deliverables to turn around some of the challenges in rural and remote and regional schools”.
The scathing report revealed a Rural and Remote Education Strategy rolled out from 2021 did not come up with any new ways to boost results, but rather shoehorned existing policies into the program while there was no time frames or ways to measure success.
“Shortcomings in the design and implementation of the strategy have meant there is little to report on its impact after more than two years since its release,” the report said.
The specific aims of the strategy, scheduled to run until 2024, include improving access to preschool, lifting teacher supply, offering better professional development, improving student wellbeing, and building partnerships to improve post-school destinations.
“The department did not provide additional resources to meet the strategy aims, establish strong central co-ordination, set time frames, set measures of success, or identify new programs to address gaps in regional and remote access and outcomes,” the report said.
The report showed permanent teacher numbers over the past six years had worsened in regional and remote parts of the state, with vacancies rising to 922 in January this year.
A large portion of classes at one school had to be merged during term one of this year, while others reported relying on retired teachers to fill gaps, which meant they were often covering subjects they had not been specifically trained in. Out-of-subject teaching in remote schools was most acute in foreign languages, creative arts and maths.
One of the objectives of the program was to build partnerships to post-school opportunities, but the report said the number of students in regional and remote areas commencing a vocational course or apprenticeship has decreased between 2018 and 2022.
Another problem schools in rural areas faced was the higher costs to purchase, maintain, and repair buildings. Two schools the auditor spoke to had waited four months for tradespeople to fix a broken window, while another school hired a grant writer to help apply for additional funding to cover the cost of repairs.
From 1 July 2023, the department moved to a new contract that will centrally cover maintenance of more items that schools had previously been required to fund, the report said.
In response to the report, Education Department secretary Murat Dizdar accepted six of the report’s recommendations, including to report publicly on regional, rural and remote key performance indicators.
Students from regional parts of the state are more likely to have lower literacy and numeracy skills compared to their counterparts in major cities.Credit: Ross Duncan
But he stopped short of fully accepting the recommendation to commence preparations for a new strategy. Instead, the department would conduct an internal review of the strategy and publish updates on current strategy commitments.
Former education minister Sarah Mitchell urged the Department of Education to accept all the auditor-general’s recommendations.
However, Car defended the decision not to adopt the auditor’s recommendation for a new strategy.
“The time for announcing strategies is over, we just need to get the work done,” she said.
“We need to actually see some action for our students and teachers on the ground inside the school gates in rural and remote and regional areas.”
The report comes as the government is locked in increasingly tense negotiations with the NSW teachers union over a new wage deal. While Car said there were existing programs to attract new teachers to regional and remote schools, she said lifting teacher pay across the board would attract more people to the profession.
“We obviously know that if we start to break the back of the teacher shortage through things like a negotiated agreement to increase pay, that will have a huge impact on schools,” she said.
The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.