Year 7 students forced to find alternate accommodation or change schools

During the SA Isolated Children's and Parents' Association conference on Friday, Kirsty Williams, The Peake Station, put forward a motion on behalf of the ICPA state council "that SA ICPA lobbies the Australian Boarding Schools Association, along with denominational and independent boarding schools in Adelaide, to discuss access and availability of boarding for Year 7 students who are geographically isolated".

State council's Katrina Morris seconded the motion with the explanation that many families were in the situation where they must send their children to boarding school from Year 7 for high school due to School of The Air and other rural schools no longer having Year 7s from 2025.

"Some families are now faced with six years of private school and boarding fees compare to five years in the past," she said.

"The extra year can amount close to $60,000 in tuition, boarding, and extra-curricular activities/requirements.

"Most boarding schools have traditionally taken students in Year 7, 8, and 9 however, some schools appear to be moving away from accepting younger boarders.

"This is more prevalent in some of the Catholic schools.

"In turn, this adds financial pressure on parents to seek boarding at other private schools in Adelaide that have higher tuition fees."

She said one of the more affordable boarding schools responded recently, there wasn't the demand for Year 7 boarding, but if there was, the school would accept them.

"This said the school does not advertise that it accepts Year 7 boarding students, only from Year 9," she said.

"Information is conflicting and a challenge to navigate for families."

Flinders Ranges branch member Mija Reynolds said she was one of the families who had been put in this situation but it had been since resolved.

"My family is very lucky, however my husband and I believed, when we had our son, we knew which school he was going to go to because he was going to go to the same school my husband boarded at," she said.

"We let it go for a while as we thought we knew what was happening and would worry about it later.

"As the time got closer, this particular school turned around and just said 'no we won't take Year 7s anymore'.

"They actually had this narrative which was extremely upsetting because they insinuated to us that we were effectively not the best of parents to be sending our child away to boarding school in Year 7 at 12 years of age."

She said her husband quickly shut it down because he explained he went to that particular boarding school at 12 years of age and it wasn't an issue.

"I understand that each school has their own prerogative that may have something to do with partial care, they may be moving away for whatever reason, but for some families, we are faced with the issue of, we no longer have access to a face-to-face education for our children in high school locally because we are geographically isolated.

"We planned to send our child to a more affordable school, now this school didn't have scholarships available but that was OK because we had planned for a long time that we were going to send them there so we made sure that we had budgeted and we had allowed for it.

"And then when we found ourselves in the situation where we realised it was the more expensive schools that we were going to have to look at and really push the scholarships.

"It was extremely stressful and we tried very hard, not to put any pressure on our child because it had nothing to do with him, but he could tell we were very stressed about it."

Mrs Reynolds said despite it all working out for them, she had realised there were now more families that don't have access to the more affordable schools and as a result were becoming competitive with each other to access the scholarships.

"The number of scholarships haven't increased so it's making it really hard for the number of familied to address this financial burden," she said.

"Some of us are lucky enough to receive scholarships to schools to resolve it, but I do just want to make it clear to those families that have young children, that are thinking about boarding schools in the future to start doing your research and finding out what is available because you can find yourself in a really tough situation."

Flinders Ranges branch member Lisa Slade asked why boarding schools were moving away from boarding Year 7 students to which two boarding schools and the Australian Boarding Schools Association responded.

Saint Marks College Port Pirie principal Sandra Hewson said she couldn't speak on behalf of all the Catholic boarding schools of which there were five across the state.

"Two of them are regional, and I've been principal at two of them, Saint Joseph, Port Lincoln, and now Saint Marks, Port Pirie, and I know these two schools certainly are taking students in Year 7 and we have Year 7 boarders at the moment," she said.

"The only insight I could perhaps offer in terms of the Adelaide schools is that they're becoming over subscribed - they're full.

"The way funding works in Catholic schools is that we have very limited access to state or federal funding for capital development - so Saint Marks at the moment, is in the process of building a new boarding house which hopefully will be open next year for 33 boarders - a nine million dollar investment that we are funding ourselves through parent contributions.

"As these schools become over subscribed and there is not room for them, I can only assume that they're perhaps prioritising the senior students that need to complete their SACE."

She said as a principal within catholic education and on a number of committees she would support ICPA and advocate for better clarity.

Westminster boarding director Andrew Junge said the school welcomed Year 7 boarders and in the past had offered six years of schooling for five understanding the extra year of school was a financial burden on families.

"You are right, there is an unprecedented demand at the moment that we are all feeling in the city," he said.

"But we are looking for solutions and I am sure all the schools will be having discussions going forward."

Australian Boarding Schools Association chief executive officer Richard Stokes said there were two state boarding facilities and two independent boarding facilities that did not take Year 7 students in SA at the moment.

"There are two things I am going to suggest to you, number one, sometimes schools run away from only having one student - I can understand that - it's a bit scary for them," he said.

"So what we want to do is get a bigger number.

"The second thing is when Year 7 became part of high school in Queensland, the state government provided the boarding schools with funds to help build Year 7 boarding facilities.

"So that might be something you could do some lobbying for, that might be useful."

Stock Journal asked the government what additional support was provided to isolated families who now have to send their children away for six years to get a high school education, why not all the state boarding schools allow Year 7 students to board and what options families in rural and remote areas have to educate their children for Years 7 to 12.

Education, Training and Skills Minister Blair Boyer said he had met with representatives from ICPA several times and was aware of the challenges presented to families who live remotely.

"It's important that all students, no matter where they live, have access to a high-quality education," he said.

"At the beginning of 2023, the State Education Allowance was increased to $4,872.12, in recognition of an 8.6 per cent increase in the CPI.

"I also committed to reviewing the State Education Allowance, which I have tasked the education department to do, and also agreed to double the amount of remote travel allowance rate from $250 to $500 per student from the start of this year.

"The state government has been committed to provide cost of living relief to families with a $100 discount per child on the materials and services charge, and by increasing the school card so that more families have access to it."

The response also said the decision about who can enrol at a public boarding school is made by the school's governing council on a case-by-case basis.