Funding is welcome…Beverly Hills Intensive English Centre refugee students Mohamed, David, Fatmata, Ziko and Samuel.

ESL funding to get a boost in 2008

By Mark Goudkamp

Funding increases for refugee students will help alleviate a crisis situation in many schools.

In May, after years of neglect, the Howard Government announced an additional $127.8 million nationally over the four years 2008-2011 for the ESL -- New Arrivals Program, specifically to support refugee students. Since the election of the Rudd Government the NSW Department of Education and Training has confirmed the funding for 2008-2011. In NSW, the additional funding is estimated to amount to $6.8 million in 2008 and $27.3 million over the four years. This will enable the Department of Education and Training to increase its support for refugee students in schools.

In 2007, the number of newly arrived refugee students into NSW government schools was 1238 out of a total of 7236 new arrivals. This is a slight decrease compared to 2006, when NSW government schools enrolled a total of 1591 newly arrived refugees. There were slight changes in refugee students' geographical settlement patterns, for example, there was an increase in the Riverina and a slight decline in the Hunter.

Southwest Sydney (821) and Western Sydney (205) still had by far the largest refugee student intakes, followed by Illawarra/South East (54), Riverina (45), Sydney (41), Hunter/Central Coast (31), North Coast (20), Northern Sydney (11), New England (5) and Western NSW (5).

The funding is welcome, but is only the start of what is needed.

With new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his new Immigration Minister Chris Evans now in power, Federation will be among those campaigning for a clear break from the Howard years that denigrated multiculturalism, demonised asylum seekers and refugees, and incarcerated children.

Among our demands will be calls for more support for refugee students and for migrant education in general. For example, the campaign to lower the alarmingly high ESL student-teacher ratios will go on. As of June 2007, these ratios were still 105:1 (primary) and 68:1 (secondary), a small improvement since our high-profile campaign three years ago, but still way higher than 1983 figures of 1:55 and 1:42.

Mark Goudkamp is Relieving Multicultural Officer/Organiser.

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December 2007 contents