Submission to the Review of Higher Education Financing and Policy
Australian Association of Social Workers
The Australian Association of Social Workers (Inc) (AASW) is pleased to make a submission to the Inquiry. The AASW is the only professional body representing the social workers in Australia. Membership of the AASW currently nears 5,000, has been growing steadily for a number of years, and is expected to continue.
The AASW is also a member of the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW), based in Oslo, and our current national president is a member of the Executive Committee of the IFSW. The Association is well-positioned to speak on behalf of the social work profession in Australia and, at the same time, draw on its significant links with social work colleagues in other countries.
The AASW enjoys a direct link to social work education in Australia through its policy, Eligibility for Membership: Policy and Procedures for the Review of Australian Social Work Courses. Through this policy the AASW assesses and approves (or rejects) schools of social work based on the course content, standard of education, organisational arrangements, and field practicum arrangement. In order to be eligible for membership of AASW, and in order to access a significant number of clearly identified social work employment opportunities, a graduate must have possession of a degree from an approved school of social work.
There are 21 schools of social work currently operating in Australia and they are listed in Appendix 1 which also indicates their current status. Universities which have applied to establish a school of social work for the first time, if accepted, will only receive provisional approval until the first cohort of students is about to graduate when the course is once again formally reviewed and the process of approval, continued provisional approval or rejection is addressed.
The minimum standard of social work education in Australia is a bachelor degree. The AASW does not recognise diploma-level qualifications which are broadly gathered under the rubric of welfare studies. There are some welfare studies degrees. However, these are neither assessed nor approved by the AASW for the purpose of eligibility of membership.
Through its membership of IFSW the Association enjoys a collaborative working relationship with other member countries and is currently observing the IFSW process to review the definition of social work and the minimum standards of training for social work education.
Terms of Reference
Australia’s higher education sector performs very significant functions in terms of the overall outcome and quality indicators for the Australian community. It is by no means the only sector. Through its contribution to education and training, it prepares individuals for a very wide range of professional and occupational functions.
The graduates of Australia’s higher education sector will directly, or indirectly, inform or influence the social, cultural, economic and community aspects of the Australian society. In turn, they will also inform our international relations and the development of more sophisticated and/or better means of addressing critical problems and issues which face the Australian community and may also be experienced internationally.
The Association believes that government must recognise the value and importance of the outcomes of higher education upon the Australian community, economy, cultural and international perspectives. Analogous to economic terminology, this is an important investment in the future of this nation. Productivity is not measured alone by economic indicators but by a full range of indicators which include the social, cultural and community health of the country.
For over 15 years, Australia’s higher education institutions have been grappling with the positive and negative attributes of technology in its various forms, continuous overt, and often covert, cuts to its funding base and increasing demands for their services. Access to higher education has become a more equitable process across the breadth of economic and cultural groupings. The sector also has had to critically address the impact of the dominant paradigm of economic rationalism. This critique has, appropriately, extended beyond a critique of its impact on higher education more broadly to the Australian community at large.
The review has asked what attributes will higher education graduates need to operate effectively in their personal and professional lives in this emerging environment. One of the cornerstones of higher education should continue to be the development of critical thinking capacities which has been augmented by specific knowledge and practice-related information which can be integrated into practice. This is important for any professional or occupational group and is the cornerstone of contemporary social work education. Thus, graduates of social work education have been provided with the necessary conceptual tools and the most contemporary thinking, research and information in social work practice. This has been done within a model which integrates knowledge and practice and results in a graduate who emerges with a functional level of skills and knowledge to enable him/her to take up practice as a beginning social worker.
It is the AASW’s contention that an integrated practice-based learning model represents one of the most effective teaching models.
The Association believes that the demand for social education places during this period will increase dramatically. As our society becomes more technologically based, there will be an increase in the demand for a wide range of appropriately trained professional and occupational groups to address both the positive and negative effects of this trend.
Similarly, radically improved technological capacities will broaden the access to higher education and give far greater access to rural/remote Australia.
The demand for social work education will, we believe, increase dramatically. The 1990 DEET report indicated that at the turn of the century, social work will be amongst the top ten most demanded professions. Changes in our social and political climate since that report will, in our opinion, continue to result in a further increase in demand. Demand for social work education has increased by 35 percent since 1985.
The Association is mindful of the need to monitor the development of social work education to ensure that the supply of trained social workers does not exceed demand.
Importantly, we are also concerned to ensure equitable access to higher education which includes equitable access to social work courses. At the present time, five schools of social work offer courses by distance education, addressing one of the barriers to access.
As indicated in the introduction, the AASW performs a significant role in setting and monitoring of standards of social work education. In doing so, we are mindful of the tension between our accountability function and the important independence of the higher education sector -–in this instance, the universities. We believe that any government must pay careful attention to the balance between the need for accountability and the inappropriate direction of policy and implementation at higher education level. Over involvement in this domain has a serious adverse effect on an important higher education role, critical thinking and the development of new approaches.
We believe that the quality of higher education courses should always be attuned to changes in knowledge-base, the nature and shape of the sector and the demands of employers and key stakeholders. However, with regard to the last point, we believe the autonomy of the universities is paramount.
The AASW has been, and will continue to be, a strong supporter of universal access to education and, as such, is opposed to any fee paying system. This having been said, we recognise the existence of fees and view with some concern the continued trend towards increases in fees and the introduction of full fee paying students in a number of Australian universities. We believe that this has serious implications for equality of access to education. This will have a direct impact upon otherwise highly suitable students who are unable to afford fees and may not be successful competitors for any subsidised funding arrangements which may be put in place.
Moreover, we are deeply concerned about the prospect of full-fee paying international students as a means to generate necessary resources to higher education institutions. Our concern in this regard pertains to social work education alone. Social work education, by its very nature, is practice-based and integrated into the cultural and contextual environment in which it is taught. As a result, social work education in Australia is not easily transferable to another cultural and political context.
Though this may be easily construed as an English-to-non-English speaking transference, the panel will be interested to know that an Australian trained social worker seeking admission to practice in the United States of America will be required to sit three exams which will demonstrate their capacity to practice in the American context. An Australian qualification is no more immediately transferable to an American context than it is to a Japanese, Malaysian, Indonesian context, or vice-versa.
It must also be acknowledged that social work training, along with other practice-based integrated professional courses must be appropriately financed. It is more expensive than a liberal arts course and any attempts to reduce funding to social work courses will result in/risk poorly trained professional groups who will then practice in society.
The introduction of a variety of financing options should be approached with considerable caution and with a clear eye to the question of access and equity. Performance-based funding models focus almost exclusively on publication outputs and research, but do not take into consideration the importance of the quality of teaching.
Means testing has never been a reliable indicator for adult education, particularly if it is firmly linked to the income of parents, as will be the case for a large number of higher education.
Similarly, by student loan schemes and voucher systems will have the effect of discriminating against people who are economically disadvantaged, in particular women who are financially dependent upon partners, who are mothers and who are also students. A significant number of mature aged social work students are from this background.
The Association is concerned that existing allocation systems for a quantitative research to the expense of qualitative research proposals. Whilst establishing cause/effect relationships in social welfare research may be difficult it should not be disadvantaged in the allocation of research funds.
The Association is gravely concerned about the implications for higher education in Australia, both in terms of its capacity to continue to provide appropriate support and training for social workers and, importantly, the questions of access to education for appropriately qualified students within Australia wherever they might live.
We are confident that the questions of access and equity will be raised in many other submissions and it will challenge the review team to ensure that these principles are maintained. However, we believe that failure to maintain these principles will further widen the concerning gap between the "haves" and "have nots" in Australian society.
At the present time, the Association’s view that social work education in Australia operates in both an efficient and effective manner and is certainly highly accountable to both the university and professional body. The blend of training opportunities in both on-site and distance education have provided far greater access for students across Australia. Through the process of regular university and AASW reviews, we believe that schools of social work have a continual imperative to review their standards of practice, curricula and teaching methodologies to ensure the best quality outcome that will meet the needs of the students, the profession and other key stakeholders.
Yours sincerely
Imelda Dodds B App Sc(SocWk) M.A. MAASW
NATIONAL PRESIDENT