Mr BAYLEY – Minister, the Closing the Gap agreement sets targets and outcomes that pertain to Aboriginal students reaching their full potential in our education system. Under this agreement, your government also committed to ‘transform government organisations so they work better for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’.
Aboriginal Education Services provides critical support for palawa students via in-school roles and programs staffed by Aboriginal people. However, most of these roles are employed on annual contracts, meaning that Aboriginal educators must reapply for their roles each year, and have limited or no employment, and therefore income, over the summer break.
Minister, I assume that you agree that having Aboriginal people directly work with Aboriginal students in our school is important, but do you think it’s acceptable that Aboriginal educators, who are themselves from a disadvantaged and vulnerable group within our community, should reapply every year? Will you do all you can to ensure that their contracts are made permanent?
Ms PALMER – We certainly value this part of our workforce. The Aboriginal Education Services provides services to children and young people in a number of ways, first, by tailoring support for Aboriginal students in several schools with high levels of need, and also by building cultural learning about Aboriginal history and culture through resources like The Orb. Staff also support teachers by offering professional learning so that they are then able to teach Aboriginal history and culture. They also have a resource library, which holds an extensive collection of materials to support learning about Aboriginal culture.
With your questions around staffing, I’ll pass that to the acting secretary.
Ms BURGESS – I’m not sure whether you’re aware that we are renegotiating the Closing the Gap strategy, and as part of that, what work will fall to our department with regards to that strategy. We know and we’re very aware that we have a small number of staff that are on fixed‑term contracts, and we’re in the process now of going to the State Service Management Office to make sure that they can be extended.
The reason behind the extension, rather than a permanent recruitment process, is because we need to think about how the strategy then is going to work through Aboriginal Education Services, and what we need going forward to make sure that we’ve got the right people in the right place to support those Aboriginal learners.
Mr BAYLEY – Those who are on permanent ones are in the administration side as opposed to the face-to-face teaching side. Is that correct?
Ms BURGESS – I understand here that we’ve got a profile of 22.61, and that 18.89 of those are permanent, and 3.72 are fixed-term. We are also slightly under profile at the moment by 1.57, and there is a current band 5 vacant position. We know that there are currently two fixed‑term, band 4 Aboriginal education support officers, and four fixed‑term Aboriginal program workers, and they’re the ones that we’re seeking extension to until we know what the medium and longer-term strategy is. Once we know that, we will recruit to those roles in a more permanent way.
Mr BAYLEY – Minister, would you be willing to take on notice providing the data of who is in what category of employment and on what kind of contract going back a number of years, even to 2014? That would give us a 10-year profile to understand the trends of employment within Aboriginal Education Services. Would you be prepared to table data on employment and data on funding for those 10 years?
Ms PALMER – Yes, we’ll try to get you that by the end of the session. If we can’t, I’m happy to take it on notice and provide that for you, but we will try to get it before.
Mr BAYLEY – Thanks. I appreciate that.
