Regional Education, Skills and Jobs Plan

REGIONAL EDUCATION, SKILLS AND JOBS PLAN

New South Wales – orana

2012 – 2014

JULY 2013

This plan was first published in July 2012. This is the July 2013 edition.

Details in this report are correct at time of drafting.

This report can be found at the Regional Education, Skills and Jobs webpage (www.deewr.gov.au/resj) or the MyRegion website (www.myregion.gov.au).

For more information about this plan, please contact:

The Office of Regional Education, Skills and Jobs

GPO Box 9880

Canberra ACT 2601

Email:

ISBN:

978-0-642-78629-6 [PDF]

978-0-642-78630-2 [DOCX]

With the exception of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms and where otherwise noted all material presented in this document is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/).

The details of the relevant licence conditions (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/legalcode) are available on the Creative Commons website (accessible using the links provided) as is the full legal code for the CCBY 3.0 AU licence.

The document must be attributed as the Regional Education, Skills and Jobs Plan 2012-14 – Orana.

Disclaimer about data used in this plan

Data used in the development of this plan comes from a variety of sources and was correct at time of drafting. This document should not be used as a data source as data referred to may have been updated or reformulated since the publication of the plan. Refer to primary sources for confirmation of data.

Contents

Regional Education, Skills and Jobs Plans 4

Strategies 4

Community engagement 4

Implementation 4

Executive summary 5

Characteristics of the region 7

Population 7

Early childhood education and care 9

School education 10

Tertiary education and training 14

Jobs, skills and workforce development 15

Other characteristics 18

Murray-Darling Basin Plan 18

Technology 18

Issues, goals and strategies 19

Issue 1 Closing the Gap in all areas for Indigenous Australians. 20

Issue 2 Availability of suitable, accessible early childhood education and care facilities within the region. 21

Issue 3 Support early childhood education services to meet the National Quality Framework requirements for Early Childhood Education and Care requirements. 22

Issue 4 Providing meaningful and engaging educational pathways for young people to reach Year 12 or equivalent. 23

Issue 5 Local options and pathways to tertiary and further education for people to study and work in the region. 25

Issue 6 Challenging labour market with high youth and Indigenous unemployment, skill shortage areas (particularly within the emerging mining industry) and an ageing workforce. 26

Appendices 28

Appendix A — Stakeholders 28

Appendix B — Existing related plans and strategies 29

Abbreviations 31

Regional Education, Skills and Jobs Plans

The Australian Government announced the Regional Education, Skills and Jobs Plans initiative in the 2011–12 Budget, as part of the Building Australia’s Future Workforce package. The initiative addresses four key areas of the Australian Government’s productivity and social inclusion agendas: early childhood education and care; Year 12 attainment; participation in vocational and higher education; and local job opportunities.

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) has deployed 34 Regional Education, Skills and Jobs (RESJ) Coordinators to work with local stakeholders to develop Regional Education, Skills and Jobs Plans for the 46 Regional Development Australia (RDA) areas that cover non-metropolitan Australia.

The plans present locally identified opportunities and challenges and outline local strategies to improve education, skills and jobs outcomes in regional Australia.

For more information, including the contact details of your local RESJ Coordinator, please refer to the Regional Education, Skills and Jobs webpage at www.deewr.gov.au/resj.

Strategies

Each plan reflects community priorities and includes goals and local strategies to achieve the community’s objectives, based on four key themes: early childhood education and care; school education; tertiary education and training; and jobs, skills and workforce development.

The plans build on the range of services and programs already offered by DEEWR and the strategies draw on the programs of other government agencies and the opportunities arising from major local projects.

Community engagement

The plans were developed by RESJ Coordinators with close community engagement and include views from young people, parents, employers, educators, service providers, peak bodies, community leaders, government organisations and agencies, and other interested individuals and organisations. The plans draw strongly upon existing strategic plans in each region, including the local RDA regional plan.

DEEWR acknowledges the traditional owners of the Orana RDA region and their elders past and present recognising their continuing connection to country. This plan strives to build and harness mutually respectful relationships and reflect community priorities in education, skills and jobs development for the region.

Implementation

The RESJ Coordinator, on behalf of DEEWR, will oversee the implementation of the strategies and promote and coordinate linkages between the government agencies, providers and stakeholders involved in this plan’s implementation.

Progress towards achieving the goals within each plan will be closely monitored, while stakeholders will be kept informed through participation in plan strategies.

This edition incorporates strategies that respond to changes in local circumstances identified through continuing community input or changing government priorities in regional Australia as well as access to new data. The plans continue to be living and responsive documents that will be revisited throughout their implementation to June 2014.

Executive summary

Orana means ‘Welcome’ in the Wiradjuri language. According to Regional Development Australia, more than 1.25 million people visit the Orana RDA region each year to see attractions such as Taronga Western Plains Zoo, Warrumbungle National Park, Mudgee wineries, Wellington Caves, the Siding Spring Observatory, Lightning Ridge opal mines and the Back O’ Bourke Exhibition Centre. Agriculture is the largest employment sector, ranging from intensive irrigated viticulture and horticulture to irrigated cotton and grain crops. In addition, beef and sheep for meat and wool are grown around the region. The Orana RDA region is covered by 13 Local Government Areas: Bogan Shire, Bourke Shire, Brewarrina Shire, Cobar Shire, Coonamble Shire, Dubbo City, Gilgandra Shire, the Mid-Western Regional Council, Narromine Shire, Walgett Shire, Warren Shire, Warrumbungle Shire and the Wellington Council area.

Based on a comprehensive environmental scan and community consultation, the key education, skills and jobs challenges identified for the region include:

·  Closing the Gap in all areas for Indigenous Australians

·  access to early childhood education and care places and early intervention services for young people with identified disabilities

·  the immediate and long-term impacts of national child care reforms on early childhood education and care stakeholders

·  meaningful and engaging educational pathways for young people to reach Year 12 or equivalent

·  local options and pathways to tertiary and further education for people to study and work in the region

·  a labour market with high youth and Indigenous unemployment, skill shortage areas (particularly in the mining sector) and an ageing workforce.

The key goals of the Regional Education, Skills and Jobs Plan are as follows:

·  programs and projects which Close the Gap for Indigenous Australians are expanded, linked and celebrated

·  supporting early childhood education and care providers to have strategies in place to meet the immediate and longer term child care reform requirements

·  promoting meaningful and engaging educational pathways to assist young people to reach Year 12 or equivalent

·  developing localised pathways to tertiary and further education for young people while they are still in school, particularly through vocational education and training and school-based apprenticeships and traineeships

·  improved employment outcomes for Indigenous, youth and older Australians to meet current and future skills needs in the region.

The region also has a Regional Development Australia (RDA) Committee with a broad plan including education, skills and employment opportunities. This RESJ Plan complements the goals and strategies in the RDA Orana Regional Plan.

Some outcomes achieved by the RESJ Coordinator working with local stakeholders include:

·  Partnering in the development and delivery of the Orana Education, Skills and Jobs Forum held in Dubbo on 1 June 2012. This forum was attended by over 50 stakeholders representing government, education, industry, registered training organisations and higher education providers. The outcomes and final report from the forum have now been provided to the regional governance committee of the Partnership Brokers who initially identified the need for this forum, and will now continue the coordination of ongoing strategies and activities. The RESJ Coordinator is a member of the governance committee.

·  Supporting the coordination of the Orana Workforce Collaboration Forum held in Warren on 19July2012. The forum was an initiative of DEEWR in partnership with the Department of Regional Development Australia, Local Government, Arts and Sport and was one of six pilots held nationally. Forty five people attended the forum and participated in a number of roundtable workshops where the priority needs for employment services; examples of successful employment services; and future employment service needs of the region were discussed. An early outcome of the forum has been the formation of a working group that is currently working on setting up a pilot project within the region to help people obtain their New South Wales drivers licence.

·  Coordinating an Early Childhood Education and Care industry roundtable in Dubbo on 15June 2012. Over 50 representatives of industry, local business, government, registered training organisations and higher education providers met and discussed the key issues affecting the Early Childhood Education and Care sector.

·  Providing information to eligible preschool providers on Supplementary Recurrent Assistance funding. This resulted in three additional preschool services within the Orana RDA region applying for funding in the 2012 calendar period and it is estimated that these three services will be eligible to receive an estimated total funding of $90,000 between them. This funding supports accelerated educational outcomes for Indigenous children and their families.

·  Supporting and promoting the Jobs and Skills Expo held in Coonamble in March 2013 which showcased the range of employment and training opportunities available to young people, Indigenous people, jobseekers and the general community within the local Coonamble and surrounding area and across the western region. Around 200 people attended, including over 30 exhibitors representing education, tertiary education, training providers, local employers, employment service providers and industry.

Characteristics of the region

This section sets out the characteristics of the region identified through a comprehensive environmental scan and local consultations. The information detailed in this section is not exhaustive of the characteristics of the region, but provides an overview and insight to some of the challenges facing the region.

To guide the RESJ Coordinator’s identification of issues and engagement with the community, various data sets have supported the development of this plan. Data used in the development of this plan was sourced from DEEWR, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and other relevant sources. Data referred to may have been reformulated and was correct at time of drafting. Different data sets are refreshed at different intervals, for example, unemployment rates are updated monthly for national and state/territory figures and quarterly for regions.

Population

The Orana RDA region covers the central and north-western sectors of New South Wales, stretching north to the Queensland border, east to include Mudgee and the Warrumbungles, south to include Wellington and west to Cobar. The Orana region is the largest RDA region in the state, covering an area of almost 199,078 square kilometres or about 25 per cent of New South Wales. The estimated resident population of the Orana RDA region in 2011 was approximately 120,760. Most of the region is classified as rural or remote, but there are three main urban centres in Cobar, Dubbo and Mudgee. Smaller townships include Bourke, Brewarrina, Coonabarabran, Coonamble, Gilgandra, Lightning Ridge, Narromine, Nyngan, Walgett, Warren and Wellington, and there are many small villages.

The region is the traditional lands of a number of Aboriginal groups, including the Wiradjuri, Wailwan, Kamilaroi, Wongaibon, Barranbinya, Gunu, Muruwari and Ngemba peoples.

According to 2011 Census data, 14.1 per cent of the total Orana RDA region population identified as being Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, compared to 2.5 per cent nationally and 2.5 per cent in NewSouth Wales. This was also an increase from the 2006 Census (13.7%). The Indigenous population is growing, while the overall population within the western region is in decline.

Census (2001 and 2011) data shows that the Orana RDA region has experienced a decline in total population of approximately 2.2 per cent over the last 10 years; however current and future population growth in the regional centres of Dubbo and Mudgee is projected to be strong as people move from smaller population centres. It is estimated by the NSW Ministerial Taskforce on Aboriginal Affairs that the Indigenous population in Western New South Wales will rise in line with the overall New South Wales Indigenous population, which for the region will increase to an estimated 19,822 by 2021.

Table 1: Orana RDA region population, 2011 figures

Source: Census of Population and Housing, 2011

A = areas; C = cities

According to the 2011 Census there were 75,258 people aged 15 to 64 years in the Orana RDA region, making up 62percent of the regional population, compared to 66 per cent state wide. Those aged over 65 years made up 16 per cent of the region’s population, significantly higher than 14 per cent across the state.

September 2012 DEEWR data indicated the unemployment rate for the Orana RDA region was 6.3percent, higher than the national average of 5.4 per cent and the state average of 5.2 per cent.

At December 2012, Centrelink and DEEWR administrative data indicated the proportion of the working age population (15-64 years) in receipt of a Centrelink benefit was23.6 per cent in the Orana RDA region, which was higher than the average for NewSouthWales (17%). This included 6.8 per cent receiving an unemployment benefit, compared to 5 per cent state wide.