Education

Many refugee young people who arrive in Australia have had disrupted schooling experiences due to war in their home country and spending long periods of time escaping their home country and being in refugee camps. As a result of this many refugee young people may be pre-literate or have limited language and literacy skills and find it difficult to settle into mainstream schooling. Limited funding to mainstream schools to address the specific learning needs of refugee young people results in high numbers of refugee young people not completing VCE and having low school retention rates.

Inadequate educational support for newly arrived refugee young people in mainstream schools is discriminatory and prevents refugee young people accessing further education and employment and participating fully in the community.

- I need to leave school and look for a job to support my family. (Vietnamese young person, who must wait 2 years before being eligible for Austudy and social security benefits.)

Finances at home are strained as his father is only able to get casual factory work as a result the above young person feels pressured to leave school to help his family out. Desperate for work and with limited language skills this young person is vulnerable to low paid work.

WYPIN has established a Homework support program to address some of the learning needs for refugee young people. 20-30 young people attend every week to get extra support.

WYPIN belives that:

- There is a need for more ESL support at schools
- More financial support needed for young people to stay at school
- Need to address the specific educational learning needs of CLD young people
- CLD young people face huge barriers to completing VCE
- Alternative learning settings that cater for the needs of young people who have recently arrived in Australia need to be addressed.