NORTHAM’s Russell Winsor and his family are facing a dilemma with the Education Department.
It concerns their 15 year-old daughter, Kayla after she received a scholarship to attend John Curtin College of Arts for 2016 and 2017.
Her chosen field is drama.
Kayla clearly has a wealth of talent in securing the scholarship, having gone through highly competitive auditions and screening activities.
Mr Winsor said the scholarship is only offered to the best students in the field, with his wife and himself doing whatever it takes to ensure this opportunity is realised for their daughter.
“The fees alone for Kayla to attend John Curtin are significantly higher than what most people encounter within our demographic, however we are also required to look at boarding options as we are simply just not close enough for daily travel to and from the college,” Mr Winsor said.
“City Beach Residential College caters for students who attend John Curtin and are in these specialist GATE programs, and this is an additional expense which is quite significant in itself.”
Mr Winsor said the issue is the existence of the AIC scheme from the Department of Education in conjunction with the SBAHA allowance.
“However due to our location being Northam, we are not eligible for these payments as per the criteria stipulated by the Department of Education,” Mr Winsor said.
“Without this assistance Kayla's scholarship opportunity is in jeopardy, as she is having to travel two hours on public transport to and from school every day, with her day starting at 5.30am every morning.
“The only option we currently have is for Kayla to stay with her grandparents who live in the Northern suburbs, and for a 16 year old girl to endure this amount of travel each day is an incredibly frustrating and exhausting task.”
In order to be eligible, the Department of Education website states: Your family home is geographically isolated from a state school that provides tuition at the grade or year in which the student is qualified to enrol, for example, Year 9.
“Northam Senior High School offers year 11, therefore we are not eligible,” Mr Winsor said.
“This is completely discriminative, and does not afford the basic rights that every student and family should have when considering a suitable educational prospect for the future.”
Mr Winsor said this eligibility criteria is starving the community of choice and control over their education.
“Our daughter has been offered an opportunity to undertake a specialty course, designed to attract only the best of the best in their field, and in turn produce the best such as Heath Ledger, Sam Worthington, Megan Gale, Kavyen Temperly (singer from Eskimo Joe) to name a few,” he said.
“We cannot afford the fees for boarding and the education, and are requesting that the eligibility be relaxed to include not only our family, but any others that are also caught in this predicament."
