A suburban school in Melbourne is believed to have become the first school in Australia to add a lawyer to its staff to help students and their families deal with various legal issues that arise.
The SBS reports that the government school decided to hire an in-house lawyer after the principal had been repeatedly approached by students about issues that were completely unrelated to the school curriculum.
The Grange P-12 College is a government school in one of Victoria’s most ethnically diverse areas with more than 58 nationalities represented at the College and many of its students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. The student population is described as transient as some students are forced to leave the College suddenly for reasons including if their families are evicted from a rental property or due to a family breakdown.
The College’s principal told The SBS that these factors and rapid population growth in the area left many students with no way to continue their schooling at the College. He said that ‘if you’re a young person who is traumatised or doesn’t know whether they’re going to be in the same house this time next week, that has huge impacts on learning.’
The College’s principal found himself being asked questions about family breakdowns, relationships and sometimes even issues of violence in the home. Although these factors affected students’ schooling, they were not learning-based questions that he could answer.
The College hired their in-house lawyer from the Wyndham Community Legal Centre on a two year contract. The placement is part of a two year pilot program costing about $200,000. It is funded by donations from philanthropic organisations, and a $10,000 grant from national law firm Slater and Gordon. The College’s lawyer started at the beginning of term three this year and has helped students and parents with issues such as transport fines, employment issues, tenancy disputes and homelessness.
The College’s main concern when hiring a lawyer was that the public would assume a lawyer was hired because there is a high criminal history rate at the College which is not necessarily the case. The appointment of a school lawyer was likened to having a school nurse or a school counsellor by The ABC – in other words, the new addition is another resource to ensure the safety and welfare of students.
Denis Nelthorpe, the manager of the Wyndham Community Legal Centre who runs the program at the College, told The ABC that the program is ‘all based on the idea of early intervention and trying to do everything we can to make it possible for the kid to stay at school’.
As the College’s principal pointed out, while issues such as mortgage distress or tenancy disputes are not directly related to school policy, these external events can impact the quality of schooling for students.
Of course not every school will be able to afford to have a lawyer on staff to help students, nor will it be required by all schools to meet the same needs experienced by the College, however this case is a great example of a school thinking practically about what steps it can take to not only improve the quality of the education received by students, but also their emotional and physical wellbeing and school attendance rate.
While the College’s lawyer has been engaged to primarily help with issues relating to students’ welfare, it is easy to see (or foreseeable) how lawyers may play more active roles in all schools in the future. The consistent increase in the amount of legal, regulatory and compliance obligations means that pressure on the non-government school system is at an all-time high.
Not only do non-government schools need to comply with a detailed set of registration guidelines, against which they are regularly assessed, they are also subject to multiple other legal requirements and regulations, not the least being workplace safety and privacy. The work of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is also likely to result in further child protection legal obligations that will apply to schools. Today schools must not only consider what they need to do to address their increasing compliance obligations, but also, at a strategic level, they must consider how to resource their compliance functions to continue to address their obligations in a sustainable manner.
Adding a ‘legal counsel’ to a school’s staff might become more common as a result.