Chapter 8: Australia’s New Arrivals Policy and the Need to Reform Refugee Education Provision

This chapter provides a critical overview of current educational provisions in Australia for students with refugee backgrounds. Across Australia’s states and territories, the Commonwealth New Arrivals Program (NAP) provides a common funding base for the initial education of these young people. It is argued that the NAP is premised on an outmoded model that ignores the reality that currently arriving groups of refugee newcomers have qualitatively different pre-settlement experiences from those who arrived in the past. Although the level of support provided through NAP was improved marginally in 2007, the program does not adequately meet current needs. It imposes substantial limits on the capacity of the school systems to provide adequately for the personal and academic needs of refugees whose pre-settlement experiences may have involved limited or disrupted schooling, or no schooling at all. Moreover, more comprehensive implementation of existent antiracist policies is needed to ensure that schools provide inclusive, safe learning environments for all students. In the field of teacher education, there is also a lack of broadly conceived programs adequate to prepare beginning teachers for the challenge of responding to students with refugee backgrounds. Some universities are instituting changes to ensure that new teachers will have the experience of working with and developing relationships with young people from refugee backgrounds. However, across the board, more consistent efforts need to be made to ensure that all teachers achieve the flexibility, sensitivity, and understanding required to meet the educational challenges of this increasingly diversified student population.