“That ICPA Qld lobbies the Queensland Department of Education (DoE) for increased allocations of specialist support staff to rural and remote schools, with funding models that explicitly account for travel time as part of staffing provisions.”
Rural and remote schools are subject to the same allocation process for specialist support staff as urban schools, with no allowance made for the distance these support staff must travel. Specialist support staff include Guidance Officers, Speech-Language Pathologists and HOSES allocation. The time that these support staff take to travel to and from rural and remote schools is deducted from the allocated time, which is sometimes already a very small fraction. We are asking that the process of allocating specialist support staff to rural and remote schools be reviewed in cases where it is untenable, and a travel allowance provided where more than one hour of travel time is required per visit.
Case Study – Teelba State School
Teelba State School is located 136km North-East of St George, which is approximately a 1.5hr drive. Their Guidance Officer allocation is 0.01 FTE, which equates to half a day per term. The Guidance Officer spends 3 hours travelling to and from Teelba State School from St George State School, effectively using up their entire hours for that term sitting in the car travelling. The role of Guidance Officers includes providing psychoeducational assessments and ‘provide leadership, support and case management in responding to some of the most complex and challenging of circumstances, including student protection matters, critical incidents, mental health issues, and suicide prevention and postvention support.’ (Dept. of Education QLD, 2026). These services cannot be completed off-site without meeting or engaging with the student face-to-face.
Teelba State School’s other support staff such as Speech-Language Pathologists and HOSES, also spend most of their allocated time in the car travelling for vital face to face visits. When you look at it across all services, the Guidance Officer, Speech-Language Pathologist and HOSES are spending most of their already limited time travelling rather than working directly with students, which means Teelba State School simply isn’t getting the level of specialist support needed to respond to increasingly complex student needs.
