Network Gives Voice to Parents in Rural Australia
Organization has won extra financial aid from federal government.
Jeanette De Landgrafft lives on her family’s farm 40 miles from the “nearest anything” on the sparse southern edge of Western Australia. Yet she and thousands of other rural parents have developed a significant voice in state and federal education policies, unlike such parents in the United States.
Through the Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association, or ICPA, thousands of parents in Australia’s tiniest towns and remote areas can bend the ears of national politicians and state education leaders who make the rules for schools in a nation similar in geographic size to the United States but with less than one-tenth the population.
Founded in 1971 by a farmer to push for more money and attention to families teaching their own children in remote areas, the ICPA also highlights the needs of small schools in Australia. It now has nearly 2,900 members in 106 local branches. Members pay $50 a year in dues,...
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