Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Curtin for her speech. As a former vice-chancellor, she knows well the importance of education in this country and I concur with her in wishing our students the very, very best of luck and in congratulating the teachers, whose fine work has got them to this stage. As an Independent, I see it as my role to be an honest and fair voice on the issues that matter to my electorate, to recognise good work where it's done and to call on the government where more work is needed, particularly for Australians in regional areas. People living in remote, rural and regional Australia have much lower education outcomes than our city cousins. This is nothing to do with our capacity to learn, and everything to do with our opportunity to do so. It is completely unacceptable that this is so in a modern Australia with a projected federal budget surplus.

Rural Australians are less likely to complete year 12, less likely to gain a certificate IV, or above, qualification, more likely to have to leave home for an education, and less likely to apply for and accept a university offer. As someone who grew up on a farm in rural Victoria, let me say that I know what impact drought has on a young person's expectations as to how high they can aim. Whether there is money around to leave home and go to university or whether we should leave school and try to get a job—never underestimate the message young kids in the country subliminally receive when their parents are struggling to manage the ravages of prolonged drought on the family income. The government's recent strategy in rural and regional education, the Napthine report, identifies clear barriers that hold country people back. We should move swiftly, for instance, on the first three recommendations of that report: uncap places at regional universities; develop new, innovative VET offerings focused on practical learning and technical skills; and expand the Regional Study Hubs program to give all students, VET and university, access to high-quality learning spaces with world-class internet. In short we need to do more to introduce our young people to opportunities for education, provide them with pathways to succeed and connect them to jobs that our regions are thirsty for.

Mansfield Secondary College in my electorate of Indi is doing precisely this kind of innovation. Commencing in 2009, Mansfield Secondary developed an agriculture and horticulture training program for year 9 students, integrated into the school's curriculum. The program addressed the need for a sustainable agricultural workforce by recruiting year 9 students into agricultural careers by organising field trips to farms and offering enrolment in VET cert II courses offered by a local TAFE provider. What is now known as the Mansfield model was a huge success: 98 per cent of participants completed that certificate II; of those, 27 per cent successfully transitioned into completing a cert III or IV, some of which led to university courses in agriculture via school based apprenticeships and traineeships. In fact it was such a success that it has spawned the workforce development project which is expanding the Mansfield model to 24 locations across the Ovens-Murray region in the coming years. It has also been expanded to address another critical skills shortage in health care and social assistance.

This project is supported by wonderful local organisations like the Northeast Tracks Local Learning and Employment Network, which supports young people and works with schools to achieve higher rates of education attainment in Benalla, Wangaratta and Mansfield. This program came to pass not because the government or the private sector made it happen but because of local creativity and hard work. Julie Aldous, a local secondary teacher, instigated the Mansfield model in 2009. She is now leading an industry and government backed push to expand the original agriculture focus of the model into health and horticulture. Lucy Wallace, a committee member with the Albury Wodonga Health Community Advisory Committee, has joined this push into the health sector to address our immediate and urgent needs for healthcare workers in the north-east. Sue Brunskill, from the National Industry Reference Committee for horticulture and conservation, has been actively engaging local and national horticultural businesses as they consider the model's employment and study success.

Increasing the life chances for kids in the country means we need to elevate and expand on these brilliant initiatives that are already taking place. A place to start would be to implement the recommendations of the government's own regional education strategy. The government committed in this election campaign to develop a study hub in Wangaratta, and I will be pushing for this to be delivered, along with the rest of the regional education strategy, to ensure that all regional Australians get an equal shot at opportunities that education offers.

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