Everyday struggle for a decent education is part of the rural reality
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Version 0 of 1. Maggie Kate Minogue is one of our local heroes. She represents one example of the reality of education in a small country town and the best reason for a needs-based education funding model. Her 75-year-old grandfather Bernie starts his day at around 4am, carrying stock to various saleyards around the district. Her mum, Kate, is the local co-ordinator for Meals on Wheels. No one in the family had been to university. Her sister Deanna has learning difficulties. Kate raised Maggie Kate and Deanna as a single mum. Deanna was born with complications that required multiple surgeries. Just after Deanna was born, a trip to Wagga hospital identified an issue which saw the little family race back to Canberra for life-saving surgery. At seven, Maggie Kate sat in the back of the car next to Deanna’s capsule, stemming the bleeding from the two-week-old’s navel due to an unformed duct. Maggie Kate decided then and there that she wanted to be a doctor. “I decided those doctors we saw had saved her life”, she says. The idea blossomed quietly as she attended local primary and high schools. She remained focussed in classes where fellow pupils did not share her academic goals. Her classrooms were unruly, with teachers working to develop her ambition but also trying to contain the needs of those with learning difficulties, dysfunctional family problems and the plain bored. Maggie Kate was the nerd, self-confessed. At 10, she started telling everyone she wanted to be a doctor. “If you put your mind to it, you can do it,” her mother told her. Teachers were generally supportive, though one suggested it was a “far-off dream”. There are two primary schools in my town, a public and a Catholic school. From there, children generally split between the local high school (one of the smallest state high schools with a student population of 180), a Catholic high school at a larger town 40 minutes away and larger boarding schools in Griffith, Goulburn, Canberra and Sydney. The effect of this split is the local school population gets even smaller, the pool of parental helpers shrinks and the socio-demographic of the student population decreases. The blunt reality is that – generally – families with greater means and/or aspirations separate from local school population sometime in the high school years. That is not to say that the children left have no aspirations and, sometimes, no means. But it is just that much harder to achieve very high results without serious work, mentoring and exposure to greater competition. Smarter kids tend to coast, in spite of talented, committed teachers. While in year seven, Maggie Kate’s mum was hospitalised for two months for a health issue. Two years later, Kate had a stroke and lost the use of one side of her body. Maggie Kate helped her mother and sister while maintaining her study pace at the local high school. The turning point came when she was selected with 40 other rural students for a “taster course” in medicine at the University of NSW, where students were shown university life by other country kids. She saw anatomy labs, the social life, the accommodation and could suddenly imagine a life studying in a city. Maggie Kate came back to school and put her head down. In doing so, she achieved what many even in our own town thought impossible and got into medicine at the University of NSW. She is now in her second year. She receives government assistance of $480 a fortnight and student rent in the university village is $560 a fortnight. Kate works to make up the difference and insists her daughter does not get a job so that she can concentrate on study. You cannot underestimate what a shock it is for children educated and raised in country towns to step willingly into city study. Our primary school takes year six students to a young leaders conference in Sydney every year. And every year, there are children who have never been to Sydney. We are just four hours away. Add to that the financial issues and the navigation of the university entry system for parents who have never been to university themselves and it adds up to a very large wall to scale. As a result, we know from studies ad infinitum that rural populations have fewer post-school qualifications than our city counterparts. Education outcomes are worse. But rural communities recognise the value of education and tertiary qualifications, no matter what the cultural warriors might say about the “bunyip alumni”. We work hard to minimise the challenges faced by our children. We drive hours to educational, sport and social opportunities such as Tournament of the Minds or dance festivals or extension workshops. Driving 250km for an opportunity is not uncommon, never mind those further west. The challenges are clear. The first is to get the children who need it into early childhood education, which has been shown to have a big impact on maximising their chances. The second challenge is to keep kids on track in the middle school years, when family problems, special education needs and other disadvantage can combine with regular teenage hormones to blow education opportunities off course. Then, if they manage to last the distance to year 12, the third challenge is to get kids into some kind of post-school training that innoculates as much as possible against a life on the dole queues. One of the greatest education innovations for our town has been the Country Education Foundation, a fundraising organisation run by local people who raise money to send our kids away for tertiary study. So far, our little Harden branch has been one of the most successful in the network of 40 towns, having raised hundreds of thousands of dollars out of a community of 3,500 to pay for study-related expenses such as textbooks and accommodation. Our fundraising events cross all divides: town and rural, sectarian, economic. I have worn fancy dress more times than I care to remember. We drag our families and friends from out of town to add to the number of wallets. No one is safe in July. This year a local nurse teamed up with her teacher mate to sew the Von Trapp curtain costumes. The pharmacist was Michael Jackson. A shearer wore a lovely copper-coloured dress with matching gold earrings. I was Sharon Strzelecki out of Kath and Kim and my better half was Shane Warne. We were a sight to behold. Maggie Kate was one of the kids who have shared the proceeds of those trivia nights. The support covers only a small percentage of her total costs, on the grounds that the Cef wants to help as many students as possible. It is enough to make the difference between staying in medicine and giving up the dream to come home to a cheaper TAFE course. The Coalition leadership has made it clear that in spite of its backdown, Tony Abbott and his education minister Christopher Pyne do not think much of the Gonski model. Their opposition seems to be more based on ideology than anything else. And it is ideology from both sides that has left country schools particularly vulnerable. I am not qualified to comment on the economic stimulus value of the Rudd/Gillard school hall program but as a parent it was galling to see a $2m hall built next to the perfectly adequate one when a single $40,000 teacher’s aide to focus on special needs kids in each classroom would have improved the education outcomes for all the students. Now Pyne is doing the same thing. His new commitment to the base Gonski model is rubbery at best. But a model which starts with the premise that all children, regardless of their family background, are entitled to some funding from government for their education is a no-brainer. Then to load it for disadvantage has got to go some way to levelling the playing field. Remember when we wanted to be the clever country? Maggie Kate had never heard of the pledge from Bob Hawke but already she is dreaming of doing a paediatric specialty, so she can help little babies like Deanna. But what of the ones not so focused, not so blessed with drive and intellect. They will continue to fall through the cracks because while Maggie Kate is a local hero, she is feted precisely because it is considered so unusual for a local country child in a local country school to succeed to that level. The Gonski panel could see that. At a guess, most parents can see it. Hopefully the government will come to see it too. Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. |