Page 4138 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 24 October 2018
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How do we reconcile the commitment to welcome every child into our schools regardless of background and circumstance, including those with complex needs or challenging behaviours, with supporting the staff to do what they love—teach and facilitate learning—in a safe and healthy environment? That is the challenge we are dealing with. The Education Directorate works very closely with school principals, staff, the Australian Education Union, allied health professionals and experts, and it has strategies in place to navigate these issues, as schools are places for learning, not violence.
As members will be aware, on 28 September 2018 the Director-General of Education entered into an enforceable undertaking with WorkSafe ACT on behalf of the territory. For those who would like to review it, the enforceable undertaking is available on the Education Directorate website. The Education Directorate has acknowledged that WorkSafe ACT has made allegations about its duty of care to staff at Canberra public schools, citing examples in three schools where staff received soft tissue and skin injuries as well as reported psychological issues. I reiterate that every worker has the right to be safe at work and to return home safely after work, and I deeply regret the occasions when this has not occurred.
Without speaking about individual cases, I can assure members that injured workers have been supported through workers compensation arrangements, including incapacity benefits and medical and rehabilitation expenses. As I said yesterday in this place, addressing occupational violence in education has been a priority for me since I became minister, and I take this opportunity to thank the Australian Education Union for proactively raising this with me as soon as I was appointed.
There are 47,945 students across Canberra’s 87 public schools and 6,814 staff, including 3,735 teachers. We want to make sure that our schools remain inclusive places where every child has the right to an education and where every teacher and staff member gets the chance to do what they are passionate about and support all students, regardless of how they learn. Equity, access and inclusion are key principles of the future of the education 10-year strategy. Developed after comprehensive consultation with our community, these principles have been confirmed by education experts as being key to achieving excellence.
While Safe Work Australia notes that workplace violence is most commonly experienced by emergency first responders, correctional services and those in the health and aged-care sectors, we also see a degree of it in our schools. This growth of occupational violence in human services, including in education, is occurring nationally and is likely to have been under-reported. Because of this, the Education Directorate’s overarching occupational violence policy and management plan have been developed to guide our response to this important issue and encourage the reporting of incidents. The reporting of an incident is not a judgement on a school staff’s ability—quite the opposite. The policy and plan were developed jointly with the Education Directorate and the Australian Education Union working group to ensure that the voices of teachers and school staff were clearly heard.
I am confident that the work I do and the work the Education Directorate implements will be scrutinised closely by the Australian Education Union, as well as by Unions
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