The Rationalist Society of Australia is seeking answers from the West Australian government on the status of the pilot program that allows a government school to directly hire a wellbeing support worker instead of outsourcing to a religious agency.
In a letter to Minister for Education Sabine Winton (pictured) early last month, the RSA asked her to detail what the Department of Education planned to do in terms of evaluating the one-year pilot program and whether it would be expanding it.
The Cook government has not publicly promoted or acknowledged the pilot as part of the federally funded – and state-funded – National Student Wellbeing Program, even though a government backbencher spoke in parliament earlier this year about the government’s decision to hold the trial.
Under the pilot, one public primary school has been allowed to directly employ a person for the wellbeing support role without having to source a chaplain or wellbeing officer via third-party labour hire firms.
However, it is not known whether this role will continue beyond the end of the pilot period next year.
In the letter to Minister Winton, the RSA’s Executive Director, Si Gladman, urged the government to provide all public schools with the option to directly hire the best person for the job.
He said that the current arrangement, in which schools contracted out to mostly faith-based chaplaincy providers, requiring applicants to have religious credentials, likely breached the state’s equal opportunity laws.
Indeed, Mr Gladman noted that in 2021 the West Australian Equal Opportunity Commissioner told the RSA that such a practice constituted “prima-facie religious conviction discrimination”.
“We understand there is no impediment to states allowing the federal funds to be used by public schools to directly hire wellbeing officers. At Senate estimates last year, the federal Department of Education confirmed this,” he said.
“We also understand that some jurisdictions, including Victoria, South Australia and the ACT, have a policy of allowing schools to directly employ wellbeing officers.”
As reported by the RSA recently, Western Australia’s public school communities have overwhelmingly called for the state to employ wellbeing positions that are “permanent, secular, professional, with direct employment by schools”.
The state’s P&C communities voted in support of two motions at the Western Australian Council of State School Organisations (WACSSO) in recent years. In August this year, they supported a motion that described the outsourcing arrangements as “no longer fit for purpose”.
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Si Gladman is Executive Director at the Rationalist Society of Australia. He also hosts ‘The Secular Agenda’ podcast.
Image: Sabine Winton MLA (Facebook)