Today, during Budget Estimates, Abigail questioned the Department of Education on how they are training and supporting teachers to identify and assist students affected by domestic and family violence.

The CHAIR (Abigail Boyd): Back on the respectful relationships issues and the domestic and family violence prevention initiatives, how will the Department of Education implement the domestic and family violence common risk and safety framework to ensure that all school staff have the capability to identify domestic and family violence and assess or manage risk?

MURAT DIZDAR (Secretary of the NSW Department of Education): Consent and respectful relationships feature a lot more predominantly in K-10 PDHPE syllabuses and in Life Ready courses in years 11 and 12. Mr Graham and his team have quite a task because what they are hard at work at is that while Mr Martin breathes a sigh of relief when the syllabus document goes out, we hit the
accelerator button at our end to produce scope and sequences for individual lessons that are evidence based and that teachers can access. It is our intention to unpack these syllabuses with quality-assured lessons. It is not just a scope and sequence for a term, but actual lessons that will be pure gold for teachers, who can grab and use them, which are developed by teachers.

Of course, teachers will need to use their professional judgement and make nuances and differences for the students who they are serving. But Mr Graham and his team are really hard at work on that. I have got to say, study after study—global studies as well as domestic studies—say that if you really want to tackle teacher workload, one of the greatest things you can give teachers is the resource material, so they can bring the syllabus to life. As a former teacher, I spent weeks on end preparing lessons. I wish back then the department was producing lessons that I could grab, rather than start.

The CHAIR: All of that is great, and I think that building that into the curriculum is great. But this particular question is around what we are doing to upskill teachers, not as teachers but as people who are in direct contact with children who may be experiencing domestic and family violence, to be able to identify and step in to help in those situations, so they know what to do. They see it, and then know what to do. The common risk assessment and management framework is what this question is about.

MARTIN GRAHAM (Acting Deputy Secretary in the NSW Department of Education): I might take some of it on notice. But I will say that our child wellbeing area has exposure to the reports from schools and it is also where we start our professional learning around identification. We have talked about how the mandatory training that takes place each year around child protection has a different
focus. Certainly, family and domestic violence has been a focus previously. It is that kind of work. In respectful relationships, we have the work around the syllabus, but we also have a significant investment around additional resources for respectful relationships. We are working closely with the Commonwealth, because all States are doing it. We are also working with the DCJ, Our Watch, Commissioner Hannah Tonkin, and so on. We definitely want to make sure that it is all aligned and that we are supporting our schools strongly with a consistent, single message. Things like the framework can be supported because we are not all talking about different things.

The CHAIR: Are you able to put a quantum on how much is being invested in this work?

MARTIN GRAHAM: Certainly. So $8 million of State funding is going into that. I think there is about $17 million of Commonwealth funding. It is a really substantial piece of work. We are doing that in house. We will have our own expertise. Our job is to support teachers. There are a lot of teachers out there, so we really want to make sure there is a strong, consistent understanding. We build off the same teams that are working on the consent material. It is all very consistent and consistent with the DCJ and the work of our partners.

MURAT DIZDAR: Ms Boyd, I also believe it starts from the top, and I am really proud that recently as an executive we did a full day of training on domestic, family, physical and sexual violence. Given the size and extent of our workforce, I must say that I found the day quite confronting around the stats and scenarios. I feel better placed as an executive around how we could support our workforce. It is our intention—the training had a massive impact on all of us—to then bring it down to the ELG layer, our executive leadership group, which includes below the deputy secretary level. I think it is an area we can do better in and we want to make sure we invest in, given the size and scale of the workforce.

The CHAIR: And the size of the problem.

27 August 2024