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PDF version of transcript (235 kb) |
Video presentation at www.aph.gov.au/ath
[Voice over]: Should parents be worried about their teenage children combining high school study with part-time jobs? Are such jobs helping teenagers develop life skills for their future careers or hampering their academic performance at school? These and other issues were discussed by educators from across Australia at a roundtable at Parliament House in Canberra. The meeting was part of the House Education Committee’s inquiry into successful youth transitions.
Brian Burgess from the Australian Secondary Principals Association knows of students working far too many hours.
[Brian Burgess, Australian Secondary Principals Association]: I think there are a lot of students working too many hours, roughly 10 hours a week should be the maximum that students should do. There are a lot of students doing more than that these days, sometimes 20, sometimes 30 hours a week and it’s just too much work.
I used to always say to my students I my school that 10 hours should be about the maximum, you shouldn’t be doing too much more than that. I think the average in Victoria now is something like 12 or 13 hour and even that’s getting a little too high but as I mentioned some students are doing 15, 20 hours or more and that really does have an impact on their study. Where as with 10 hours you could do maybe a Friday night, you could do a whole Saturday or Sunday and that would basically get you to your 10 hours and that’s enough. Any more time than that and student are impacting on their study.
[Voice over]: Committee chair Sharon Bird says new research shows 52 per cent of high school students are working while studying. The inquiry wants to find out how work hours impact on school results.
[Sharon Bird MP, Committee Chair] There is clearly an indication that up to about 10 hours a week doesn’t have a negative impact on young people’s study. Beyond that you can clearly see a linear progression that the more hours they’re doing the more difficulty they have. The ACTU and some of the unions raised a very important point also which is that it also depends on the shift, it’s not just the number of hours. So for young people, for example packing shelves they’re often starting after the store’s closed it might be 9 - 9:30 at night and finishing after midnight, so the shift itself may not add up to a huge number of hours over the week but the hours have a very significant effect. We know physically that young people need a great deal more sleep.
[Voice over]: The federal president of the Australian Education Union Angelo Gavrielatos says teachers are aware of the problem.
[Angelo Gavrielatos, Australian Education Union]: There is clear evidence, both anecdotal and evidence based on scientific studies that show that some of our students in high school are working far too many hours and hours that are quite frankly unsocial. There is a point that which combining learning and work is very helpful, it’s complementary and there are positive outcomes for students but there is a point at which you tip the scale where the number of hours worked and the type of hours worked are counterproductive in terms of the student’s educational wellbeing.
[Voice over]: Professor Margaret Vickers from the Australian National Schools Network agrees.
[Professor Margaret Vickers, Australian National Schools Network]: I’ve done some studies using the longitudinal survey of Australian youth and yes you find that young people who work more than 10 hours a week are less likely to finish high school. Really what’s happening is that being in a part time job and being in school those two things are in competition with each other. Which is more attractive to you? Studying and finishing Year 12 or doing well at McDonalds or whatever employment situation you’re in and hanging on to that job, getting graduated up to supervisor level. You’ve got students who have to work because their parents are poor, or a single mum and no dad and there’s a lot of income problems in the family and they have to work long hours, you’ve got kids who work for the family café or the family business and you’ve got kids who work because they want an ipod. It covers the whole spectrum from very low income families to high income families, all of them might have in common is the belief that if they get a job when they’re 15 and they work in year 9, 10, 11 that will stand them in good stead and they will have a good track record and that will establish that they’re a good employee.”
[Voice over]: Committee member Rob Oakeshott says small family-run businesses often need their teenage children to help out.
[Rob Oakeshott MP]: That was one of the issues that was raised, one of the questions that was put around the room today was whether a cap on the number of hours, in particular key years in education but even that becomes a fraught question when again, referring back to my area a lot of the people that are trying to balance work and study, its all they’ve known it is their family environment. I buy my petrol, for example from a young kid who’s been serving me fuel for many, many years, that’s what he knows, that he’s family home and that’s he’s environment and so the definitions are very loose on the fringes as to what is work, what is family, what is study.
[Voice over]: There are various reasons why high school students work.
[Brian Burgess, Australian Secondary Principals Association]: There’s probably a couple of issues one; students from lower socio economical backgrounds it could be a family necessity that they actually earn some income. For other students it’s a living necessity or they see it as a living necessity, it costs a lot of money these days to run your mobile phone or to go out is very expensive so to actually live some sort of independent life from their parents students feel as though they need to earn some income.
[Sharon Bird MP, Committee Chair]: It’s something I’ve been very conscious of for a while now; my boys are 24 and 19 so right in the middle of these challenges. Although as a former high school teacher I was also conscious of the fact that in year 11 you had a whole lot of kids come back after Christmas because their parents had said if you don’t find a job or apprenticeship after Christmas your going back to school and so reluctantly they dragged themselves back, they don’t want to be there, they’re not engaged or they’re not happy to be back in the school setting. Very often they’d last maybe a term or maybe half a year at the most and it would just be clear that it wasn’t successful for them.
[Angelo Gavrielatos, Australian Education Union]: Unfortunately in all too many cases it’s economic and financial issues that motivate or force students into these situations. We’ve got to look as a society at what kinds of pressures are being placed on families and on individual students that are forcing these kinds of work patterns. This is all work for this committee to deal with.
[Voice over]: Trying to cap students’ work to 10 hours was also deemed impractical.
[Brian Burgess, Australian Secondary Principals Association]: It would be dangerous going down the cap level. Schools need to have some flexibility around their school hours, we need to converse with students about what their purposes are here, whats the long term goal? Is it a short term goal of having some cash to pay for your mobile phone? Or is it a long-term goal where you can actually earn an income to buy a home? That sort of conversation needs to happen, its probably a combination of things that we need to do here to encourage students to work a bit less. But it really comes down to a case by case basis because like as I said some students are doing it through a family necessity, they don’t have much choice so it means the school or the education system has to be more flexible in how it operates so that it can allow the student to actually do that.
