Thursday, 17 August 2023

School zoning appeals

Brad BATTIN (Berwick) (17:37): (307) My adjournment is to the Minister for Education, and the action I am seeking from the minister is to assist with the rectifying of a very sensitive situation, a school enrolment, in my electorate. As this matter is subject to an intervention order, I will be referring to people as ‘the parent’ and to schools by a letter, and I am happy to supply the minister further details off the record later in relation to particular schools to ensure that we can protect the privacy of these people. The parent lives in my electorate with her child, who currently attends one of our local primary schools. The parent submitted their preference to attend secondary school A; however, that was denied due to the school zoning, because they were classified as ‘out of zone’. The child was instead accepted to school B. The issue with this is that the parent and their child have a current intervention order on another parent and the child of that parent at school B. Because of this the parent lodged an appeal, provided copies of the intervention order and wrote an extensive letter detailing the reasons why the child could not attend the school that they had been zoned to. And just to put it into perspective, the zone distance we are talking here is under about a kilometre and a half. We are not talking long-range, massive distances to travel; they are very, very close to where they are going.

Subsequent to this the parent received a letter saying that the appeal had been unsuccessful; however, there were no details or context as to why it was unsuccessful. It appears that it has not been reviewed correctly. They have followed up with the school and spoken to the principal via email, who also did not provide any explanation, just saying that the school is bound by zoning, which makes the parent feel like the appeal process is redundant if they cannot accept out-of-zone students in exceptional circumstances – which by any measure this certainly is. In the parent’s own words, this is what they told me: ‘This ordeal has been extremely traumatising for me, and the thought of having to be in the same place as this person when dropping my child off and at school functions is very distressing. On top of this, this presents an opportunity for this person to know my location and follow me, which poses a significant risk to my safety.’ The parent spoke to the Department of Education, who were less than helpful, and the person that they spoke to had no idea what she could do to assist. She said someone would call the person back, and to this date, this has not occurred.

Minister, I am more than happy to provide all the details to you in relation to this and will do so once I leave the chamber, but I wanted to raise this issue as part of an overall broader issue of the lack of consideration of special circumstances when we are talking about school zones and enrolments, and particularly around the appeal process, to ensure that when people do appeal it is heard fairly. Every student has the right to a safe environment when they go to school, and if there are concerns, particularly legal concerns, whether it is between parents or non-parents, with intervention orders, that needs to be taken into consideration.