That ICPA (Aust) advocate to the Minister for Education and the Department of Education to further enable Regional University Study Hubs (RUSH’s) to provide support services with appropriate safeguards to local secondary students who are learning by distance.
Regional University Study Hubs are funded by the Commonwealth Department of Education to provide support to online tertiary students. These hubs have staff, learning spaces, technology and connectivity to wrap around distance learners. and create a community of learning with the students in their localities. These facilities and services can easily be extended by the Hubs and staff to secondary students who are learning by distance, with appropriate safeguards around child protection. The Commonwealth financially supports the infrastructure and staffing in RUSH’s for tertiary studies, and extending that support to secondary students will be a low marginal cost with potentially large benefits. This will particularly be the case where there are RUSH facilities in towns with no local secondary schooling, such as is the case in places like Boulia, Bedourie, Birdsville and Jundah. However, it is also the case in larger towns with RUSH’s where local secondary schools only go to Year 10 or schools with year 11 and 12 only have narrow curriculums leading to a number of students studying single subject distance education which occurs in so many of our local schools.
Further, having secondary students utilise RUSH’s will embed these students into a tertiary learning environment in amongst tertiary students, which is a fabulous exercise in widening participation for tertiary pathways and opportunities for these school students.
The Regional Education Commissioner, Hon Fiona Nash stated as an Issue for Consideration in her 2023 Annual Report that action be taken to increase regional students’ access to a greater variety of secondary school subjects through in person and distance education measures, such as…..expanding the services of Regional University Study Hubs to include support services for secondary students, including enabling distance learning or opportunities to access specialist subjects. This motion supports that statement of the Regional Education Commissioner.
