Last Updated 10 October 2002.
This statement was provided by Tom Mann to the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention
STATUTORY DECLARATION
I, Tom Mann, of [address removed], teacher, do solemnly and sincerely declare as follows:
BACKGROUND
1. I have been awarded a Bachelor of Science from Aberdeen University, and a Masters of Agricultural Science, Doctorate of Philosophy and Diploma of Education from the University of Adelaide. I received my TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) qualification at the Adelaide TAFE Institute.
2. I have taught agriculture at the Roseworthy Campus of the University of Adelaide from 1974 to 1994. I have also taught for two years at secondary school level and lectured part-time for a year at the Adelaide TAFE Institute.3. Following an article appearing in Adelaide's daily Advertiser newspaper, I applied for a teaching position at the Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre ('the Centre'). I was interviewed by two employees of Australasian Correctional Management ('ACM').
4. ACM offered me a six week contract of employment as a teacher at the Centre. That contract began on 30 September 2000.
SIX-WEEK CONTRACT
5. After my arrival at the Centre I attended an induction program spread over three days. The induction program covered the basic requirements of living at the Centre, including security, reporting, emergency training and how to conduct oneself in the Centre.
6. During the six week contract period there were two other teachers contracted at the Centre. One of the other teachers was newly appointed, on the same six-week contract timeframe as myself, and the third teacher already had about three months experience teaching at the Centre by the time I arrived. Both of the other teachers were female. During this period there were between thirty and forty children at the Centre.
7. The three teachers were completely responsible for the educational needs of the children. Apart from the provision of basic teaching facilities, such as tables, chairs, cabinets and whiteboards, and financial assistance for the purchase of teaching aids and materials, at no stage did we receive any assistance from either ACM, the Department of Immigration, Multicultural Affairs and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA), or federal or state education departments with regard to the kind of syllabus or educational program. The eventual syllabus was completely devised by the three teachers using whatever resources we could obtain. ACM wanted to know about our program but they were reactive not proactive in its development.
8. Maths and English formed the main subjects of the educational program for the children. In addition to these two main areas of study, the children were also taught science and the environment, music, art and craft, dance, and some physical education. We also included some time in the program for games such as snakes and ladders and chess. The children often suggested they would like to make something.
9. The children were divided into three different classes in three separate class rooms: mixed classes of ages five to sevens, eight to twelves and teenagers (13-17). This division was arranged by the teachers, not by ACM; it was the most convenient given the number of teachers and classrooms available.
10. Assisting the three contracted teachers were detainee teachers who were helpful in translating some terms into Farsi and Arabic as necessary.
11. The classrooms were about three and a half metres wide, and about twelve metres in length. The classrooms were 'transportable' modules with a moderate level of air-conditioning.
12. Classes ran from nine until midday in the morning, and from two until three thirty in the afternoon. At about three thirty or four o'clock in the afternoon we began to teach the adult asylum-seekers.
13. I returned to Adelaide at the expiration of my six month contract and eventually rang the Centre to see if there were more vacancies for teachers. ACM later contacted me and notified me that they were taking teachers on six month and twelve month contracts. I agreed to take a six month contract as I didn't think I could last for an entire twelve months.
SIX MONTH CONTRACT
14. My six-month contract to teach at the Centre began on 5 March 2001. The conditions during this contract were completely different from my earlier six week contract.
15. The number of children in the Centre had risen sharply since my earlier contract, and by mid-July 2001 there were more than three hundred children in the Centre. From March 2001 until the end of May 2001 there was only one other teacher being a male from Queensland. As I had been there the longest, I took over responsibility for the general running of the educational program including the library, kindergarten, computer centres, assistance to detainee teachers and daily recording required by ACM and DIMIA. These duties were in addition to a five to six-hour contact per day of teaching. The detainee teachers were paid one dollar per hour for time spent teaching and we assisted them on a Friday morning training and information program to support them in their teaching efforts (at the expense of teaching the children during that time).
16. At the time I arrived for the six-month contract period, the classrooms were the same as for my earlier contract period. There were three classrooms in the Main Compound in addition to a library, computer centre (11 computers) and a kindergarten for the younger children. The classroom dimensions were clearly unsuitable for large numbers of students.
17. In each of the new compounds, Mike and November, there was an educational centre, incorporating an educational room for about twenty-five children, and a computer centre with eight computers (operational in June 2001). Classroom space in these compounds was insufficient to cater for both adult and children's programs. As a result we often conducted classes in the mess. There were no proper educational facilities for Oscar and India compounds.
18. By mid-July 2001, the sheer number of students (more than 300 children) necessitated that we split the classes further as it was impossible to fit all the children into the classrooms at the one time. Classes were split so that one group of children was taught from nine until ten in the morning, and another group taught from ten until eleven in the morning. When I was teaching during my earlier six week contract, the children were exposed to between four and six contact hours of teaching per day, but by the middle of July 2001 the children were only receiving between one and two hours of contact teaching per day. The adults were taught in the afternoon with a contact of one hour per day for English for the various groups of beginners, advanced, women and men.
19. There were not enough resources to make full separation of the students along age, gender or ability lines which is unlike the usual process of separating classes on the basis of different abilities and different country backgrounds.
20. My days were full teaching so I had no time to spend marking any material for the students as each night I had to prepare for the next day and also prepare materials for the detainee teachers.
21. During this six month period, most of the teachers were on a six week or three month contracts which meant a high rotation of teaching staff with teachers departing and arriving on a regular basis. Not all of the teachers had TESOL experience. There were also a lot of children arriving and departing the Centre so classes were constantly disrupted by new students or departing ones. In addition, movement of children from one compound to another frequently occurred (due to DIMIA's method of separation of detainees according to the stage of processing); this caused problems in managing the teaching program for a specific group of children. In addition, it was unsettling for the children.
22. Most of the classes were instructed in English but with the help of detainee teachers who could interpret into Farsi and Arabic. Some of the detainee teachers took their own classes.
23. About eighty-five percent of the children attended classes. A female ACM employee and a male employee tried to encourage unaccompanied minors, mostly aged 13-17, to attend classes but eventually the employees became dispirited and continued on with only their normal duties. There was no other encouragement from ACM staff, apart from occasional attempts by the teaching staff for unaccompanied minors to attend classes.
24. There were no individual assessments for children when they arrived at the Centre. There was a suggestion by [name removed], who was the manager of the Centre at the time, that as children were educated at the Centre they could be graded and certified. This was never put into practice because of lack of teaching staff and resources-everything was always ad hoc and undefined.
25. There were no certificates or any formal recognition for the students that they had attended class. We were not initially informed when children were leaving the compound so we were not able to present them with any record of their education or say goodbye to them. Later, we were given lists of people who were to be released the following day.
26. The first we knew of any of the children was when they turned up for class. We would keep a roll which was our only record of the children's names. We were not supplied with any information by ACM on any of the children (apart from the nominal roll information which we could access for name, date of birth, nationality and language).
27. There was no full program for children with disabilities.
28. Some of the teenage children became visibly depressed the longer they stayed at the Centre. These children stopped coming to class or if they did attend their mood had deteriorated so they no longer showed any enthusiasm for learning. Motivation declined noticeably the longer the students were there: especially amongst the Afghani boys who withdrew from the teaching environment.
29. I personally referred four or five students, both boys and girls, to see a psychologist during my six month contract. Sometimes my referrals were formal, and other times they were informal. Some of the students returned to class after seeing the psychologist but would later drift away again.
30. One of the three psychologists was not able to continue after three months of the twelve-month contract. They were not in a position to deal adequately with problems concerning children as they were overloaded with dysfunctional cases of adults as well as being hampered by other constraints.
31. We were required to report to ACM when any of the children were hit. Two or three detainee teachers were suspended fairly promptly after allegations of hitting children. The biggest problem was not the physical abuse but the overall emotional abuse which occurred because of the traumatic environment in which the children were placed. Emotional abuse, while defined in the FAYS document relating to child abuse, was far more elusive to identify at an individual level. Reports were only made for physical abuse.
32. The thought that teenage students could take an external TAFE course was considered by ACM to be out of all realms of possibility. While I was there the Catholic Church offered us the use of a primary school but ACM management denied us this. There were plenty of possibilities for the children to be taught in Woomera, but ACM denied this request on the basis of security and logistics.
33. As the children's parents' psychological condition deteriorated, I observed that their children would also go downhill and stop attending classes. The current educational climate for children in the Centre will be a cause of long-term concern for the children unless the program is changed to be community-based.
GENERAL COMMENTS34. If the environment was improved dramatically at the Centre, longer contracts for teachers (between six and twelve months) would serve in the children's interests. Under the current conditions, however, three months is enough to expect any teacher to last.
35. It is in the children's interests for their education to be structured and formalised and for them to have outside contact with other children. At present individual needs are not being met and this needs to be addressed.
36. There are potentially worthwhile opportunities for improving the quality of education offered to detainees, but the detention environment and the length of time spent in detention, affecting both parents/guardians and children, will diminish these. A holistic approach of providing families or cohesive groups with educational services, to children and adults, as well as taking care of their well-being would assist greatly. This, coupled with an improved overall environment and a maximum time spent in detention, suggesting three months from experience and irrespective of the outcome of their cases, would go along way in facilitating educational improvements as well as lessening the amount of emotional child abuse, the main perpetrator of which, I believe, is the Government through DIMIA.
I make this solemn declaration by virtue of the Statutory Declarations Act 1959 as amended and subject to the penalties provided by that Act for the making of false statements in statutory declarations, conscientiously believing the statements contained in this declaration to be true in every particular.
This statement was signed on 2 July 2002.
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