Science Show

Mentoring was mentioned in the recent National 2020 Summit as a new idea. But the idea is in operation already, with much success in Israel, and for the last 15 years at Perth's Murdoch University. Russell Elsegood argues the idea should be adopted nationally.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Russell Elsegood: One newspaper columnist branded a HECS rebate for students who undertake community service as one of the few ideas to emerge from the National 2020 Summit that is new and useful. Useful is far too mild a term for an initiative that would be truly revolutionary for both Australian education and the nation as a whole, especially a nation that, Prime Minister Rudd acknowledged, needed to promote volunteerism.

But new? No. The idea of giving fee relief to student volunteers has been promoted here in Australia for a decade, and the foundations to make it work are already firmly established. The idea was inspired by the internationally-recognised success of Israel's Perach Project, which was launched more than 30 years ago. Perach now has nearly 30,000 university students annually volunteering as peer tutors to primary and secondary students, for which the volunteers can earn fee rebates of up to 50%.

At the summing up of the 2020 Summit, Mr Rudd publicly embraced just two of what were termed top ideas to emerge from the Summit's working parties; the development of a bionic eye and the HECS rebate for students. Well, the bionic eye is a reality, with medical researchers announcing the day after the summit that the first bionic eye will be implanted within weeks.

The question now is will we have to wait till 2020 to see volunteerism in Australia given an urgent fillip by introducing an incentive to encourage many more of our youth to commit their time, energy and talent to community service? I, for one, hope not, because for nearly 15 years students at Murdoch University in Perth have been the mainstays of a pioneering program to provide a much-needed community service.

Since 1994 more than 1,000 undergrads, and some post-grads as well, have joined the Science Technology Awareness Raising Program, or STAR, to volunteer as peer tutors to primary and secondary school students. Based on the Pimlico Connection at the prestigious Imperial College in London, STAR introduced to Australia the concept of university students volunteering as peer tutors in normal school classes on a regular, weekly basis. And, since 1999, those of us involved with STAR have advocated to successive federal government ministers that the voluntary commitment and talents of these student volunteers merits a rebate on their increasingly burdensome HECS fees.

In the lead-up to the 2001 federal election I put the idea to Mr Rudd's predecessor as leader of the parliamentary Labor Party, Kim Beazley. While Mr Beazley's senior policy adviser seemed to warm to the idea, the chance to see it implemented was lost with Labor's defeat at the next election. The case was put again in 2002 and 2003 to Peter McGauran when he was science minister; in 2005 to then education minister Brendan Nelson's senior policy adviser at a meeting arranged, at the minister's request, in Parliament House, and in a personal briefing to Julie Bishop when she was minister in August 2006. From early last year the case was made to both Stephen Smith as shadow minister, and then to Minister Gillard when she took the education portfolio.

To hear in the Summit's Sunday summing up that it was Minister Gillard's working party that presented the top ideas to allow community service to reduce a person's HECS or HELP debt, and to improve science and maths education by connecting scientists and others with teachers, especially in our primary schools, brought a wry smile. Because, had the visionaries put the two top ideas together, there was the foundation of the national peer tutoring program that had been advocated for ten years.

But for those of us who have strived to put peer tutoring on the national agenda, there was a bitter irony seeing these two top ideas emerge from Minister Gillard's working group because on the Friday before the summit I had received a letter, written on behalf of the minister by a senior departmental bureaucrat, saying 'there is currently no funding available to support a national peer tutoring program'.

That being the case (at a time, incidentally, when the federal government is likely to have an $18 billion surplus and there is a critical skills shortage in scientists, mathematicians, engineers, linguists, especially in Asian languages, and, above all, a critical shortage of teachers to educate the future generations in these disciplines) perhaps I might be excused for indulging my imagination of what could be.

Imagine tens of thousands of university students, most aged between 18 and 24, regularly assisting students in primary and secondary schools across Australia in science and technology classes, laboratories and field excursions. Trained volunteers, these peer tutors provide both academic support and positive role models. Some will choose to become teachers as a direct result of their experience.

Is it possible? If Australia follows Israel's example, then it is definitely possible. Twenty percent of Israel's higher education students are involved in the Perach Project, the peer-tutoring program that provides support to tens of thousands of Jewish and Arab students. If Australia achieved just half that level of voluntary participation from its university students, there would be an estimated 120,000 peer tutors nationwide.

Australia has been slow to adopt the model of university-to-school peer tutoring that has burgeoned internationally over the past 30 years. Perach-style programs are now in some 15 countries, and other countries have adopted a similar model pioneered at Imperial College. But, from Australia's perspective, there is a stumbling block to creating a national program. Israel so values education that it offers student volunteers the incentive of rebates of up to 50% on their study fees. It is a major investment in development of skills by a nation whose greatest natural resource is its people.

Would Australia's governments see good reason to support such an approach? Who could deny the need at a time when there are teacher shortages, especially in sciences and languages? Students are turning away from studies that lead to skills and qualifications that both employers and government say are essential to the nation's future, and young people need young, enthusiastic role models to counter negative peer pressure.

Of all age sectors in our nation, 18 to 24-year-olds remain the least involved in voluntary community service, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics. True, the percentage of volunteers in that age bracket has increased in recent years, but there are good reasons for why this age group has less time for volunteering. Those who do pursue studies beyond high school are, in many cases, having to hold down one and sometimes multiple part-time jobs to help pay for their education, a point made by the national president of the National Union of Students, Angus McFarland, when commenting on the HECS rebate for community service idea.

Would HECS rebates, similar to those provided in Perach's model, encourage more students to volunteer? Very likely, because already there are hundreds of full-time university students, from a wide-variety of socio-economic backgrounds, who annually volunteer in university-to-school peer tutoring programs across Australia. A fact overlooked by the NUS president.

These peer tutors give between two and four hours each week to work in school classrooms under the supervisions of teachers, stimulating students' interest in learning and providing positive role models that can help their younger peers to reach their potential and to raise their aspirations, often in the face of strong, negative pressure from their so-called mates. The student volunteers in Perth's STAR peer tutoring program may not face the daily perils of their Perach peers, some of whom have been killed during the years of turmoil in that region, but they offer their time and abilities in some of the city's toughest areas, where schools are ringed by wire-mesh fences topped with barbed wire.

The STAR Program, now in its 15th year, has had between 80 and100 volunteers each year peer tutoring in 25 metropolitan schools, and, since 1998, teams of peer tutors have travelled more than 50,000 kilometres by bus to more than 30 high schools in regional towns from Port Hedland, Karratha and Newman in the Pilbara, to Albany and Esperance on the south coast, to engage students in hands-on science. As well, peer tutors have joined schools groups on environmental projects; for example, revegetating stretches of the degraded banks beside the salt-affected Avon River at Northam, monitoring the health of metropolitan lakes and wetlands, and helping to prepare a vehicle for the Darwin to Adelaide solar car challenge.

Through the program's STARlink project, science students from schools in areas of low post-secondary participation are hosted by peer tutors for a day's experience as a university student on the Murdoch campus. The day's program will include sitting in on a lecture, hands-on laboratory experiments and a field study. STAR has since helped spread the model, and this year nearly half the nation's public universities are involved in an informal peer tutoring network, with 15 universities running university-to-school peer tutoring programs. But, as a former science minister said, 'they run on the smell of an oily rag'. And with the rising price of oil it's getting harder to keep that rag 'fuelled'. Programs have a constant battle to find sponsorship or grants, as most universities can offer little more than 'in-kind' support, despite the fact that the student volunteers are among their most high-profile and credible ambassadors, a fact confirmed by independent evaluations, such as the first longitudinal evaluation of peer tutoring to be undertaken in Australia.

In her two-year study of the STAR program, Dr Kerri-Lee Harris of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at Melbourne University found conclusively that there were benefits for all the participants; the volunteers, school students, teachers, schools, universities, sponsors and the community. Over the two years there was near consensus among the school students that having a peer tutor in their class was a good idea, with more than 80% saying that peer tutors helped them learn. Half the students went further to say that having peer tutors in the class made the lessons more interesting. Teachers, too, valued the contribution the program made to their own teaching. They also valued the link to university resources that the program provided. Dr Harris's ground-breaking research on STAR is supported by major, international studies.

But the aim of peer tutoring is not only providing support for school-age children. It gives university students the opportunity to gain first-hand experience of some of the social issues facing their community, encouraging them to become active contributors in society, willing to assume civic responsibilities, a chance to use their knowledge and to develop skills that will be valued in the workforce.

Each year, feedback from STAR peer tutors includes comments such as, 'This was the most satisfying experience of my years of study,' and as many as 4% of those who joined the program with no plans on a teaching career decided to add a teaching qualification to their science or language degree. Peer tutoring has much to offer Australia in so many areas; science, technology, our youth, our community and our nation. Now is the time to put a national peer tutoring program into action.

Robyn Williams: Russell Elsegood, who ran the STAR program at Murdoch University in Perth with sponsorship from the Potter Foundation and big corporations like BP and Woodside. Maybe something in the budget coming up?

Guests

Russell Elsegood
http://www.sciencewa.net.au/index.php?Itemid=587&id=1875&option=com_content&task=view

Presenter

Robyn Williams

Producer

David Fisher

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