Dismantling Abstudy: the Coalition's 'practical reconciliation'
BY KIM BULLIMORE AND SUE GREEN
For almost 30 years, Abstudy has been one of the key components of ensuring increased educational opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Since 1997, however, the federal Coalition government has been slowly dismantling the scheme.
First introduced in 1968 by PM John Gorton's Coalition government, Abstudy was originally aimed at improving indigenous students' employment prospects by providing financial assistance for their post-secondary education.
Within the first year of Abstudy being available it was discovered that many indigenous students were not eligible to access tertiary education because of the gap between the compulsory years of secondary schooling and the normal tertiary entrance requirements. As a result, Abstudy assistance was extended to indigenous secondary school students as well.
By 1975, there was recognition that many indigenous people in remote communities were having difficulty in being able to undertake tertiary education as a result of their family and community commitments. In 1976, Abstudy allowances were extended to cater for indigenous students in remote areas.
Retention
The importance of Abstudy was highlighted in a 1992 government report, which found that the retention rate for those receiving Abstudy was 33% compared to 22% for those who did not.
In its 1995-1996 annual report, the federal government's department of education confirmed this, citing a review of Abstudy conducted by Anne Byrne. According to the review, approximately half of all indigenous tertiary students and more than a third of secondary school students said that they would leave study if Abstudy were not available.
Despite Abstudy, indigenous Australians are still educationally disadvantaged. In 1991, only 0.8% of the indigenous population held a degree of higher qualification, compared to 7.7% of the non-indigenous population. A 1994 survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed that:
- Nearly half of indigenous people aged over 15 had not received any formal education or reached year 10.
- Only 10% had reached year 10, with the retention rate to year 12 for indigenous students being only 33% compared with 75% for all other students.
- Only one in six had obtained post-secondary qualifications.
In May 1997, federal education minister Amanda Vanstone announced that the Howard government was reviewing Abstudy, to ensure that "funds were more effectively targeted". The review resulted in cuts to Abstudy of $5 million in 1997-98, $10.9 million in 1998-99 and $11.6 million in 2000-2001.
In December 1998, David Kemp, Vanstone's successor in the federal education portfolio, announced that beginning from January 2000, Abstudy would be brought into line with the general Youth Allowance and the Newstart job-seeker allowance. According to Kemp, this would "open up more opportunities for indigenous students to access a wider range of assistance to achieve better education and employment outcomes".
What Kemp failed to point out was that the government had already introduced a highly restrictive and prohibitive eligibility criteria and means testing regime for Youth Allowance and Newstart recipients. Prior to these changes, a living-at-home student's income was not subject to testing, with parental income being the only basis for means testing.
Consequences
What the "mainstreaming" of Abstudy with Youth Allowance and Newstart means in practice was explained to 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly by Marita Akee, the Indigenous students officer at the University of Canberra. "Last year, I had to drop out of uni for six months because of the changes to the parental income testing", Akee said.
"In 1996, I was eligible for the full living away from home allowance. With the changes in 1997 to Abstudy, my allowance dropped by $50 per fortnight, and now with the latest changes, I am no longer eligible for assistance at all. I come from a single-parent family, but now because of the changes, my part-time job is included in the parental means testing, putting my mother and myself over the income threshold of $24,000 per year, so now I have to try and survive on my part-time job income."
Akee's situation is not unique. In fact, according to a 1999 report on the changes to Abstudy commissioned by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), far from opening up more opportunities for indigenous students, the government's changes have resulted in over 80% of indigenous students being further disadvantaged.
The ATSIC report went on to state that the changes to Abstudy at university and TAFE levels "benefit only a small proportion of the total Abstudy student population — the young and single". The primary reason for this is that the majority of indigenous students attending tertiary education do not fit the mainstream student profile.
While the majority of non-indigenous students only take up tertiary education after the completion of senior secondary schooling, the trend among indigenous Australians has been for tertiary education to be undertaken mainly by mature-age people, with study being connected to gaining qualifications that can contribute to their involvement in community development programs.
Prior to the mainstreaming of the allowance, Abstudy was more finely tuned to take into account this indigenous pattern of further education as well as the differences, both culturally and socially, in student circumstances. With Abstudy's alignment to Youth Allowance and Newstart these circumstances are no longer taken into account.
Women
The biggest losers under the changes to Abstudy are women, who make up almost half of the total number of indigenous tertiary students. According to government statistics, there are 50,495 Abstudy beneficiaries, with 30,192 receiving secondary school assistance and 20,304 receiving tertiary assistance. Of those receiving tertiary assistance 77.7% are over the age of 20, with 60% being female.
The most common type of Abstudy allowance is the "Independent for students over 21 years" (48.1%) and the "Independent with a pensioner education supplement" (PES). The latter accounts for 25.7% of all Abstudy tertiary assistance recipients.
Under the old scheme, PES students could receive either $60 per fortnight or $120 per fortnight on top of their single parent or disability allowance to help them undertake tertiary education. With the changes to Abstudy, PES students will have their allowances aligned with the PES benefit available to non-indigenous pensioners.
As of January 2000, students eligible for PES will receive $60 per fortnight on top of their single parent or disability allowance to attend university. This rate, however, was to be reduced in March to a mere $30 per fortnight.
The other group of indigenous students to lose under the mainstreaming of Abstudy are "block-release" students. These are students, usually from remote communities, who remain in their community for most of the academic year, but attend a tertiary institute up to six times throughout the year for intensive face-to-face tutoring and lectures.
Block-release courses have been the most successful mode of study for indigenous students as they allow students to remain within their communities and with their families while studying. In addition, these students have been able to remain in employment.
Previously, Abstudy provided the administration and travel arrangements for block-release courses and the actual cost per student was meet by Abstudy. Under the Howard government's changes, the educational institution is responsible for the administration and travel costs for block-release courses.
Costs
Moreover, the institution is given a block of funding with Abstudy worked out on a formula of an average per student, rather than the actual cost per student. This means the institution will have to consider how much a student will cost it when considering if it will accept the student into a course. This may prevent educational institutions from accepting enrolments from students in remote and isolated communities.
The duration of each block of study time in block-release courses has also been cut. Previously, the maximum time was two weeks per block; now it is only one week per block. While this does not affect some courses as they only operated one week per block previously, there are other courses where it was essential that students attended for two weeks per block because of the nature of the course. Now these courses are unrealistically expected to provide the same quality of education to students in half the time.
In December 1999, Kemp told an indigenous educational conference: "Education has a very important role in the reconciliation process. The provision of a high quality education which allows indigenous people to develop to their full potential and participate fully in society as respected equals, will lead to a stronger and more united Australian society and will lead to a stronger appreciation of our nation's distinctly unique history and the cultures of our first inhabitants."
The Howard government, however, has deliberately chosen to ignore the "cultural uniqueness" of indigenous people and push them into mainstream patterns which do nothing to assist them to overcome the specific economic or social disadvantages they face.
This fact was highlighted in the report commissioned by ATSIC, which concluded: "The alignment of Abstudy to Youth Allowance and Newstart in 2000 damages the opportunity for life-long learning for indigenous Australians [and] attempts to force indigenous Australians into a pattern of further study not suited to most indigenous Australians, and reduces the financial support for those indigenous community members most ready and equipped to contribute to their community's economic, social and political determination."
[Kim Bullimore is post-graduate student at the University of Canberra and a member of the Democratic Socialist Party. Sue Green is completing her doctoral thesis at the University of Sydney. Both are members of the Indigenous Student Network.]