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THE RIGHT TO LEARN: WHY AUSTRALIA NEEDS TO TAKE A CHILD RIGHTS APPROACH TO EDUCATION MEGAN MITCHELL Megan Mitchell served as Australia’s first National Children’s Commissioner from 25 February 2013 to 24 March 2020, focusing solely on the rights and interests of children, and the laws, policies and programs that impact on them. Ms Mitchell was previously the NSW Commissioner for Children and Young People, Executive Director of the ACT Office for Children, Youth and Family Support, Executive Director for Out-of-Home Care in the NSW Department of Community Services and CEO of the Australian Council of Social Service. Ms Mitchell holds qualifications in social policy, psychology and education.
A common assumption in Australia is that all children and young people have access to free, high-quality education. Unfortunately, all too often this is not the case. Many children experience major difficulties in accessing education, including children with disability, children living in remote areas, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people who are pregnant or parenting. My most recent report to the Australian Parliament, In Their Own Right: Children’s Rights in Australia (2019) 1, highlights the educational disadvantage suffered by particular groups of children within Australia. The underlying causes of this disadvantage are complex and multifactorial, but I offer the following as a brief overview of key issues:
• Children and young people with disability in Australia continue to face challenges in accessing education. A significant majority of the complaints relating to children that were received by the Australian Human Rights Commission in the 2018–19 reporting year were received under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) in the area of education.2 The lack of medical and allied services for children in remote areas, in particular, can affect access to education for children with disability. Physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, and early intervention services are examples of services that are not readily available in regional and remote areas, yet these play a crucial role in supporting
children with disability to participate in education on an equal basis with others.
• National reading and numeracy outcomes for children in Australia decline with remoteness. For example, in 2017 the proportion of Year 5 students that achieved at or above the national minimum standard in reading was 95% in major city areas compared to 52.7% in very remote areas,3 and in numeracy was 96.2% in major cities compared to 60.7% in very remote areas.4 • Educational outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are poor when compared to their nonIndigenous peers. School attendance, literacy and numeracy targets did not meet the Closing the Gap goals set by the Australian Government for 2018, although targets on early childhood education enrolment are on track.5 • Section 38(c) of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) currently allows religious schools to discriminate against students on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status. Discrimination is also permitted on the basis of pregnancy or breastfeeding. This legislation gives religious schools the ability to exclude particular students. This directly contravenes Article 2 of the Convention, which prohibits these types of discrimination. • Children themselves identify serious problems with the way education is delivered. During my own consultations with children in 2018, many commented that their capacity to learn was hampered by a rigid, one size-fits all approach to learning that does not respond to the individual needs and circumstances of students.
