UNLESS Education Minister Sue Ellery agrees next week to back track on plans to close five Schools of the Air (SOTA), parents of remote education students and supporters will protest outside parliament house before the school year begins.
Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association (ICPA) WA president Tash Johns, Marble Bar, said she, vice president Liz Sudlow, Northampton, and probably two other ICPA State council members will meet with Ms Ellery next Wednesday, January 17.
They also plan to meet Opposition leader Mike Nahan and Opposition education spokeswoman Donna Faragher the following day, Ms Johns said.
She said the “flying visit to Perth” next week was part of a campaign led by ICPA and supported by WAFarmers, Pastoralists and Graziers Association (PGA) WA, West Australian Council of State School Organisations, Country Women’s Association and Kimberley and Pilbara Cattlemen’s Association to have the proposed 2019 SOTA closures overturned.
The Nationals WA leader Mia Davies and deputy Jacqui Boydell, were also supportive and part of a working group comprising representatives of organisations seeking a change of heart on closing the Carnarvon, Kalgoorlie, Kimberley, Meekatharra and Port Hedland SOTAs, she said.
An ICPA State council meeting last Thursday had confirmed date and time for a protest rally proposed to be held if Ms Ellery did not give a commitment next Wednesday to keeping the SOTAs, Ms Johns said.
“It (protest rally) will be from 10am outside parliament house on Monday, January 29,” she said.
“We had previously thought we might hold it outside the Education Department, but that is now changed to outside parliament.
“Even if they (Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly) are not sitting, there will still be ministers and members of the government and their staff there.
“We’ve just put the rally up on our website and the response to it has been really good so far.”
Ms Johns said Facebook comments indicated the rally would attract parents from across the State who believed their children would be disadvantaged and their education opportunities compromised by a proposed merging of SOTAs with the Leederville-based School of Isolated and Distance Education (SIDE) which offers a kindergarten-year 12 curriculum.
She said it was hoped former students, tutors and other supporters could also attend – a Save Our Schools of the Air group has attracted 3375 members in about three weeks, according to its Facebook page.
“It’s not just going to be the ones boarding (regional parents in Perth for the start of their children’s year at boarding schools and colleges),” Ms Johns said.
“We understand there are parents prepared to make a special trip to Perth from all over the State just to protest at the closures and they’ll make a lot of noise.”
She said the proposed ICPA protest rally was not associated with a rally and industrial action proposed by the State School Teachers’ Union (SSTU) of WA the next day, Tuesday, January 30, before most students return to school for term one of the new year.
SSTU members plan a general rally to protest at $64 million proposed to be cut from the education budget to help address the State’s broader economic problems and loss of 170 education positions by next year.
A package of changes to regional and remote education, proposed to save $16.4m as part of the wider education cuts, includes closing the five SOTAs and incorporating parts of their operations into SIDE, closing residential colleges at Moora and Northam and closing four regional camp schools.
While SOTAs and SIDE come under the State Education Department and promise to provide similar satellite communication-delivered teaching to children unable to attend a normal school because of distance, supporters of SOTAs claim they are the better option.
Teacher visits to students, school camps and other regional-focus activities and class conversations help engender more of a normal school community atmosphere for students learning at home than the more remote SIDE education system, they claim.
Ms Ellery has said she would consult with parents of SOTA children – there are 162 enrolled for this year.
As previously reported in Farm Weekly, rallies against education cuts have already been held in Karratha, Geraldton and Kalgoorlie.
The Liberal Party, The Nationals WA and PGA have attacked the government this week over its proposed closing of SOTAs, claiming it does not fully understand the social and economic impacts its decision will have on families living on isolated properties or in small regional communities.
“The sentiment with respect to abolishing the Schools Of The Air is unambiguous,” Ms Faragher said in a letter to Farm Weekly.
“Across the board, in regional, remote and metropolitan Western Australia, no one supports the government’s ill-thought-out decision,” she said.
Ms Davies said the government “has betrayed the bush with its cruel cuts to regional education”.
