Meeting with Principal of Wudinna Area School, 11 August 1999 - notes
Wudinna is a small town located on the central Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, 577 km west of Adelaide. The population of Wudinna is 650.
Wudinna Area School has approximately 225 students from Reception through to Year 12. The school's catchment area extends over a distance of approximately 45 km in a north-westerly direction through to Kopi in the south and Koongawa in the east.
Richard Hellier, Principal of Wudinna Area School and Chris Sidoti, Human Rights Commissioner, Alby Jones, Co-Commissioner, and two HREOC staff were present at this meeting.
Issues raised
In addition to the following issues raised, Richard Hellier submitted to the Commission a list of issues raised in consultations with students, staff and school council, reflecting the perspective of each group on education at the school.
Confidence in the school
It can be difficult to establish to the confidence of parents and the community that the service provided by rural schools is equal to the service in the city.
"People get lots and lots of mixed messages and many of them are inaccurate. I have taught in the independent sector as well as the government sector and I think there is good and bad in all sectors and good and bad in all schools. It is difficult to make gross generalisations."
When the school analysed the results of the PAT maths test for students Years 4-10, the students at Wudinna Area School were above the national average, despite a myth in the community that students were behind in maths.
"We don't get a huge amount of coverage in the media when we want to talk about the good things we are doing. And because of our sparse population it is difficult to get information out. We try to do things with our website, but of course very few in our community have access to that (Wudinna School has its own website)."
Staff in rural schools
Rural schools often end up with either young inexperienced staff or staff who came to the place and never left. Wudinna has a mixture of staff.
There are benefits in having teachers of all ages.
Staff have to be very independent in rural schools because there is a lack of specialist support. Training can be difficult to access.
"The number of opportunities for training in country areas are limited. There are many, many opportunities in the metropolitan area that are offered in evenings, just short courses, but these are not accessible or realistic here."
It costs well over $1,000 to go to one training course in Adelaide. The amount the school receives for staff training and development does not cover costs realistically.
Staff feel they get no support for training-associated costs such as travel and accommodation. Travel costs for mandatory Area Principal's meetings are personal costs.
There are also safety issues around travelling to other towns for training.
"When the staff are travelling they are at risk. Last term three of my staff had accidents because of kangaroos. Fortunately they weren't injured. But every time they are out travelling for work they are at risk."
Living conditions for staff
The cost of living for teachers is high. Petrol and groceries are expensive. It is usually a 500 km round trip to go to the local football on Saturday. There is no pharmacy in Wudinna. Mail takes a long time. These living conditions affect staff morale and can be a disincentive to take up employment in Wudinna.
Wudinna is lucky to have a daily air service (once a day).
School maintenance
There are limited tradespeople in Wudinna. Work can be very expensive and takes a long time. The water in Wudinna, from the Todd River, is undrinkable. The Water Authority has increased the chlorine to combat the algae levels and now the seats of taps disintegrate in weeks. The water pours out of the taps but you have to wait three days for a plumber. This happens regularly.
Computer servicing is similar. The Principal and groundsperson, the secretary and her husband combined to install the cabling for the computer network. The principal tried to employ someone from a company to do it at first.
"But I tried to employ someone from a company to do that. There just isn't anyone over here. to get someone from Adelaide, most of the companies just said no. One of them was 'very generous' - they said they would send someone I would have to pay $220 an hour from the moment they stepped outside their door to the moment they got home!"
Technology
Dialling up from home onto the internet is exceptionally slow, and you need to make three or four calls to make a contact that stays. This is basic infrastructure that the school can do little about. The town is lucky to have ISDN capability, but many people in the community cannot access it at all.
The phone system is an ancient commander system, so even this means that the school cannot access certain services.
Range of curriculum
The range of curriculum is perceived as a huge issue, but country schools have some advantages. If you do not mind the mode of delivery, then in fact there is a huge range of subjects available through Open Access. In a metropolitan school students can only study what is on offer whereas in country schools if they cannot offer something, at least they find a way to deliver it. Many parents and students will refuse that offer because it is distance education. Face to face teaching is seen as preferable.
"We have to train our students so that they can succeed in those modes. We are talking about that in my school with the community. My vision is that all of our Year 8 students will do a subject in distance mode, they won't do it with another school or Open Access College. They'll do it in the school, but in distance mode. I still have a long way to go in terms of winning people over because of the bad press that distance mode has in people's minds. People fear is that if they embrace it the government will say look it's so expensive to maintain facilities in rural areas, so let's make everything distance mode. And there is a huge distrust of the bureaucratic and political process. Parents feel betrayed in a number of ways."
As a result people try to solve all the problems themselves which leads to frustration.
Video conferencing
The school spent $8,000 on picture tell video conferencing facilities at the school and negotiated lessons with the Open Access college, especially music teachers. This has fallen apart for the moment because service providers have said they cannot afford to provide a service. Students were more motivated about the lessons using picture tell. Last year students completed a retail certificate using picture tell. A teacher was able to become accredited through the system, and now the course can be delivered through the school.
The system is expensive. To operate the picture tell link it costs $40 an hour, but it does work for many students if it is maintained.
Teaching numbers ratio
"Next year if I lose one student, I lose 1.6 teachers because it is on a whole load of cusps. And that's the sort of things we have to face. And the consequence on the school is profound. Staffing-wise for many schools of this size, are not economically very viable in terms of cost. It is very, very expensive to educate children in these schools. I can understand that but we've got some obligation to these communities."
It is difficult to predict the enrolment in advance and weigh up the consequences of this information.
School management issues
"When it comes to the leap into local management, and the government at the moment is giving us that, our communities are very fearful and cynical. They are fearful because they don't have expertise. We have to learn to buy expertise. But we don't have an accountant in town, for example. So the first thing parents say is that they can't manage the money because we haven't got the expertise. They are also fearful that these are just going to be money saving measures."
The amount of money that a school receives for a relief teacher is not adequate considering the real costs of paying a replacement. Wudinna received a grant to pay for a relief teacher when a staff member went on training, but the amount was $150 a day whereas the cheapest teacher that they could find was $240 a day.
"You get a grant, and you control that, but it doesn't actually cover the costs. The government says it will give you the money for something, but you don't actually get all of it."
Workload of staff
"There is an expectation that you participate in the community. There is an expectation that you will take sport. All these expectations build. These are issues that are hard. And there are certain administrative functions you have to perform independent of size."
Some people find this a stressful part of rural teaching.
CAP funding
The changes to CAP funding formulae has caused great concern in the community.
In 1997 Wudinna received $21,249 CAP funding. Under the Griffiths model it was to be reduced to $11,197. They managed to broker a deal to make it $17,030, but this was still a very significant drop. Ceduna had a very dramatic cut, although the school is very isolated and experiences severe disadvantage. The communities were very angry and actively lobbied government.
"We believe that isolation needs to take into account a number of factors. One is isolation from Adelaide. We accept that in South Australia, Adelaide is the main delivery centre for service for this state. Secondly, isolation from a large regional centre. I guess that's where the debates come - what is a large regional centre? We would say from here, we find it very hard to understand why Port Lincoln, and schools in Port Lincoln did, would get a bigger per capita amount for CAP than we did. Because of course, geographically they are further from Adelaide. They get more transfer points if you are in Port Lincoln school, you get more money for all of the grants that are given, but the costs are not as high. We say the model's flawed. We don't say that people in Port Lincoln are not isolated. They do have some problems of isolation and they do have to access some services from Adelaide. But the situation is more complex than has been described at the moment. We believe that there needs to be some notion of smallness that regardless of the size there are some inherent costs."
There needs to consideration of what services are available as well as distance, and senior service provision.
CAP pays for the Year 12 students' travel costs to Adelaide for a drama performance for their studies. This is a distance cost.
The State government has manipulated a Commonwealth grant that is designed to combat isolation to address other issues of disadvantage because it is politically expedient.
Students with special needs
The school currently supports 9 students with learning difficulties, 7 students on Negotiated Curriculum Programs and 1 reception student on reading recovery program (a successful early intervention program at reception to Year 1).
Students on school cards are over-represented among students with special educational needs. Any student who comes into the school on a school card is automatically screened for learning problems.
Last updated 2 December 2001.
