Camps survey results

Comments from other organisations

We also reached out to other stakeholder organisations and asked them two questions about school camps:

1. What’s the main challenge or concern you see with school camps right now?
2. What’s one solution or idea you believe could help?

VicSRC

Here’s how the Victorian Student Representative Council (VicSRC) answered those questions:

1. Students are concerned about their schools offering fewer opportunities to engage in experiential learning such as camps and excursions, due to rising costs. When they are offered, the associated costs to families are a real barrier to students’ participation.
2. Fully fund all Victorian schools to deliver extra-curricular activities like camps, which provide critical opportunities for students to form positive experiences and relationships at school.

Victorian Principals Association

Here are the responses from the Victorian Principals Association (VPA):

1. Cost for families is always at the forefront of considerations of schools when they are considering the experiences that thy wish students to have.  The VPA applauds the ongoing funding and the increase in the Camps, Sports and Excursion Funding (CSEF) for eligible families, along with the School Savings Bonus this year, as this does make a difference.Ensuring that there is a connection between the curriculum content and creating opportunities for real life learning, working together with their classmates, and solving problems together creates memories for students that often last a lifetime.  There is often a real excitement in students, sometimes with a little trepidation as they arrive for their first cm ap experience.  We know that this is also the same for many parents.School camps are often one of the most rewarding things any teacher, or school principal wish to provide for their students and the feedback can be immediate, through the smiles on the faces and the joy that is shown by children as they are participating in the camp, but also at a later date, when they reflect on these experiences back at school, or even many years later.The impact of managing the risk assessment of schools, along with time in lieu requirements for educations has created conners and challenges for principals.  They wish to make sure camps and excursions are safe for all, and, that they can meet the obligations for staff members through paying them for their time, or alternatively providing time in lieu following a camp.  Both of these issues create workload implications for school leaders, along with staffing costs which must be met out of school budgets. As a result of this, we are seeing the lengths of school camps reduced and in some cases, overnight camps being replaced by day excursions.
2.  Ideally, we call for full funding for all government schools through the Better and Fairer Schools agreement to flow sooner rather than later, along with the continued support by government of the CSEF.
   While not the total solution, full funding will go a long way to ensuring that participation for young people in school camps is not limited to the capacity of parents to contribute, or for schools to find alternative means to pay for teachers to undertake this work outside of a normal school day.  The impact of school camps can often be undervalued, due to the ongoing focus on curriculum achievement and outcomes.  For many students, school is not just about learning the critical skills of literacy and numeracy. It is also about learning about the work they live in, the natural environment, working with others to solve problems, and experience the joy of challenges that they may not be to experience in their home.

Australian Education Union

Here’s the response from the AEU (Victorian branch):
The time in lieu arrangements introduced for teachers in 2022 are an important way to ensure the work of teachers outside of normal paid hours does not go unrewarded, as it had done up until that point. A culture where volunteer teacher and ES labour enables school camps is not sustainable, nor a proper basis on which these extra-curricular activities occur. With teachers still doing an average 12 hours unpaid overtime per week, and with excessive workload being one of the top reasons teachers leave the profession, contributing to the teacher shortage crisis, we need measures that properly recognise the full contribution of teachers. The Department of Education’s decision not to fund time in lieu, beyond funding for elements of school camps, is a symptom of a much bigger problem. Victorian public schools are the lowest funded in Australia, with the Allan government delaying $2.4 billion in funding that should start to be allocated from next year and instead will be delayed to 2031 unless the state government reverses their funding cut. With time in lieu for teachers an ongoing feature of school arrangements, it is essential that it is funded adequately regardless of whether teachers wish to take the time accrued as time in lieu or instead receive it as a payment.

Country Education Partnership

And finally, here’s what the Country Education Partnership had to say:

1. Time in Lieu has resulted in many Principals attending camps and having a significant role on camp. Interstate camps have reduced due to the complicated application process and also the delayed application process approval. Many schools no longer have Canberra on their camp cycle for this reason.
2. Increased financial support regarding Time in Lieu and camps. Improving the response time in regard to interstate camp applications