The Australian education industry is consistently bombarded with new legislation, regulation and guidance almost every month. It would not be surprising to find schools suffering 'regulation-fatigue', particularly schools in Victoria.
Over the past 12 months there have been enormous changes in the compliance obligations of Victorian schools. The introduction of criminal offences was a major step for ‘the Education State’, and, of course, the new Victorian Child Safe Standards that enforce seven minimum standards (Standards) relating to child protection were introduced and now apply to all organisations that provide child-related services in Victoria. A similar regime exists in South Australia and Victoria.
The Standards have been overwhelmingly accepted, and welcomed, by enthusiastic schools who are pleased to see the State Government introducing a minimum standard of care for Victorian children. However, controversy exists due to the Government’s role in this new regime.
While schools are scrambling to get their compliance ducks in a row by the August deadline to ensure the safety and protection of their students, a question keeps arising: ""how is the Government going to handle this significant change?"
This question is not easily answered. And if the performance of other State and Territory Governments is anything to go by, the Victorian Government is facing a difficult challenge.
New guidelines: child protection risk management
The Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority (VRQA) released further guidance earlier this month relating to Standard 6 of the Child Safe Standards: 'Strategies to identify and reduce or remove risks of child abuse' (VRQA Guidance).
See our article Victoria sets the bar sky-high for child protection risk management. The latest VRQA Guidance is incredibly detailed and will become an excellent resource for schools unsure of what a 'risk management approach' to child protection looks like and it exists in addition to multiple other VRQA resources produced by the VRQA per Standard.
But for schools who are unfamiliar with how to address the concepts and requirements required by the Standards and various VRQA resources, compliance with them presents a costly and confusing challenge.
The cost of compliance
One of the most common question coming from Victorian schools regarding the Standards is: "how are schools going to afford this?"
This question would be most daunting for government schools as an EY Sweeney School Readiness Report published in March revealed that those schools and primary schools are least aware of the new Standards. Being unaware of what they need to do, with less than two months to meet the deadline, suggests that pressure may lead to urgent spending to achieve compliance in time.
The implementation of all the Standards, not just Standard 6, will cost schools a great deal of time, (from teachers, principals and governors), resources and money. Concern has been voiced that smaller schools in rural Victoria for example, don't have the time, money or, in the case of some of the complex risk requirements that have been introduced by the latest VRQA Guidance, the expertise to comply with the child protection risk management requirements.
The Royal Commission report titled ‘Hear no evil, see no evil: Understanding failure to identify and report child sexual abuse in institutional contexts’ (the Report), identifies this as a critical issue in child protection risk management in schools, stating that implementing a child protection policy, and wider program, will have significant resource implications.
"Training in implementing policies and managing the implementation costs money and time. It's expensive to create safe buildings with no spaces where adults' interactions with children are out of sight. Ensuring that no child travels alone on a bus with an adult is costly. For small organisations in particular, there may come a point where the cost of the child protection policy makes it impossible to continue to run the service".
The Report suggests that there will come a time when a school will need to make decisions about thresholds of reporting and risk in order to manage all of its risks, including those outside of child protection, to enable it to remain an operating and financially viable education service.
The Government's role
The importance of effective risk management, particularly in the child protection sphere, cannot be overstated. However with the brand new, resource-heavy risk management framework introduced by the Victorian Government, the question remains: "what is the Government doing to help, other than more specifically defining obligations for schools?"
A school's principal or business manager must justifiably wonder: "where will the time/resources/money come from to meet our risk management obligations?"
We have seen similarly prescriptive schemes introduced in other States around Australia that require organisations to introduce measures to protect children more vigorously and pro-actively but the success of those schemes are ultimately undermined by a lack of government resources.
This is an issue School Governance has raised previously in our article Child protection crisis: How will departments cope with the consequence of increased legislation following the blocking of hundreds of child protection reports due to failed computer systems in Queensland and Tasmania. In March it was reported that the Tasmanian Government promised to commit $20 million to relieve pressure on the child protection service but this funding is a band-aid reaction after significant errors in the child protection regime were detected.
Queensland has committed $416 million to fund changes in response to the recommendations of the 2013 Queensland Child Protection Commission of Inquiry final report, but yet the computer failures still occurred.
The Victorian Government created the Standards in response to the Betrayal of Trust Inquiry's report. Despite adopting all recommendations made by the Inquiry, there has been little discussion about funding for the re-vamped child protection regime. The Victorian 2015-16 State Budget provided for $65.4 million to employ more than 110 child protection workers to meet the expected growth in protection reports, expand the roll out of the after-hours intake and crisis response service state wide, and prevent and respond to child sexual exploitation" however it mains unclear if that money has been provided or used. Given that Queensland has committed $416 million, it's also unclear if the Victorian funding allocation will suffice.
Information relating to how the Government plans to monitor compliance with the Standards has also been scarce. It is understood that the Government will be enforcing the Standards across Government-funded organisations through its contractual funding arrangements - this includes non-government schools. It is unclear however how they will monitor compliance and enforce the Standards for private organisations that provide services to children that receive no government funding.
What next?
There is no question that the Victorian Government's decision to require a rigorous risk management framework in schools is a step in the right direction for student safety and protection. But it can also be said that there is ambiguity about resourcing in terms of how:
- the Government will be able to administer the new system; and
- schools will be able to afford to comply with their new requirements.
EY reported that less than 7% of schools feel they are ready for compliance with the Standards so unless the other 94% of schools commit significant time and resources to compliance now, it is unclear how they will be able to make any attestation.
Other States and Territories around Australia should also take note of Victoria’s regime as it is likely that similar schemes will be rolled out across the country, with the ACT, Queensland and South Australia already having some form of ‘child-safe’ standard or regime. For more information about this increasing trend, see our earlier article explaining the need for Child Protection Officers in schools here.
