HN EWS RELEASIE
NQ DATE 6 March 1974
AUSTRAILIA AND ASI A : THE CHALLENGE OF EDUCATION
The following is the text of a speech by the
Prime Minister, The Hon. E. G. Whitlam, MV. P., to the
Asian Seminar during the Centenary Celebrations of the
University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Tuesday 5 March, 1974:
" There is something profoundly satisfying, and
essentially contemporary in spirit, in the decision to hold an
Asian Seminar in conjunction with the centenary of this great
University. I can think of no more fitting demonstration of the
reality of your involvement, and Australia's involvement, in the
welfare of the countries of our region.
The origins of this University, like those of this
State, are of course rooted deeply in European culture and, more
particularly, in the customs and traditions of the great English
foundations of scholarship and learning. For that reason, yo-a'
emphasis on Asian education and culture, and Australia's links
with Asia, is striking proof of a modern and progressive interest
in our neighbours. For myself it is especially gratifying that
your seminar reflects two deep personal commitments of my own:
my commitment to education and my commitment to the progress and
development of our region.
During my recent visit to South-East Asia my aim was
to advance Australia's national interests in a region of
continuing and increasing importance to this country. I believe
I succeeded. I believe the confluence of history and geographyour
mainly European origins and our location on the edge of
South-East Asia affords us a unique opportunity to demonstrate
that countries with quite different ethnic, cultural and
religious backgrounds can evolve intimate and lasting relationships.
We have moved closer to Asia; we are involved in Asia
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as never before. And we are particularly involved in the
education of Asian people. We provide funds for the expansion
of the teaching of Asian languages and cultures in Australia.
We provide travel grants to enable Australian teachers to visit
Asia. A month ago my colleague the Minister for Education went
to Bangkok to accept, on behalf of Australia, an invitation to
join SEAMEC, the South-East Asian Ministers of Education
Conference. Naturally our interest in the region extends beyond
cultural and educational matters, important as these are. We
give substantial economic aid to Asian development. I have
therefore chosen this occasion to announce that the Australian
Government will contribute $ 18,150,000 to the Asian Development
Fund. As many of you know, the Fund has been established within
the Asian Development Bank, and my colleague the Treasurer, in
his capacity as Governor of the Bank, was among those who
supported the creation of the Development Fund. Historians will
note, I trust, that Australia is one of the first countries to
announce its contribution. The beneficiaries of the Fund will
be the poorer developing member countries of the Asian and Pacific
region. There are many who suggest that the chief emphasis of
Government has been to promote a " new nationalism" in Australia.
It would, I think, be better and more accurate to describe our
policy as a new internationalism.
My principal purpose this morning is to tell you
something of Australia's contribution to Asian education,
particularly through the Colombo Plan.' In this room today there
is living, brilliant evidence of the success of that Plan and 4
of the contribution this university has made to its ideals and
objectives. I note,' among t he other participa nts of your
seminar, the Honourable Datuk Taib, Minister of Primary Industries
in Malaysia, a distinguished member of the South Australian bar
and a graduate of this university. I welcome Mr W. R. Crocker,
Lieutenant-Governor of South Australia, a former Australian
diplomat of great eminence and, again, a graduate of Adelaide
University. I pay tribute to Sir Percy Spender, former
President of the International Court of Justice, who, as a
Minister of the Australian Government, did much to develop and
-encourage the Colombo Plan in its early years.
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Indeed,-looking at your list of speakers and chairman
both Asians and Australians I cannot recall a more distinguished
and representative assembly of men whose whole lives and careers
have been devoted to the cultural and educational advancement of
the Asian people. I welcome you all, and wish your seminar the
utmost success. The Australian Government attaches great importance to
its overseas aid activities. We regard the technical assistance and
training elements of that aid as most significant. We are now
establishing a new organisation, the Development Assistance Agency,
to administer all our aid programs, whether bilateral or
multilateral. We want to ensure that an innovative and imaginative
approach is adopted to foreign aid and to see that our aid programs
are quickly and effectively put into action. Our objective is not
only to increase the volume of Australian aid, but to improve the
quality of the assistance we are able to provide; to ensure that
it has a more direct bearing upon improving the quality of life in
developing countries.
Put simply, our aid is oriented to the needs of fellow
human beings. The training and education elements of aid programs
are the most direct means by which we can attain this orientation.
By building upon human skills and knowledge, we help to develop th-a
one essential, self-regenerating resource upon which social and
economic progress ultimately depends. Training and education
programs have properly been in the forefront since our official
overseas aid programs began in' 195l with the commencement of the
Colombo Plan. Australian assistance to education under the Colombo Plan
has been directed over the years into a range of activities designed
to meet various needs of the recipient countries. At present our
assistance covers training in Australian universities, Government
departments, educational institutions and industry; the sending of
experts and advisers to the developing countries to assist in
research, training and development; and the provision of equipment
for educational institutions in the developing countries themselves.
The number of awards financed each year under Australian
Government aid schemes for training and education in Australia has
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grown impressively; from 450 in 1955 to 3,345 in 1973. In money
terms, annual expeinditure on education and training under the
Colombo Plan has increased in the last five years from $ 3.7 million
to $ 6.4 million. To this should be added substantial sums for
assisting educational institutions abroad. These figures can be
expected to grow, in keeping with the general growth of our aid
programs.. You will recall that the Government last year accepted
the United Nations target to raise its official development
assistance to 0.7 per cent of GNP by the end of the decade.
Perhaps I should point out that the Colombo Plan techniques
of providing training and technical assistance now extend beyond the
Colombo Plan area being covered by various programs of assistance to
countries in Africa and the South Pacific, including Papau New
Guinea. My-commaents today can be generally taken to include these
other programs.
EDUCATION AND TRAINING IN AUSTRALIA
Overseas students have made up a significant percentage of
full-time enrolments in Australian universities. In 1972 3492
overseas students from Asian, African and Pacific countries were
enrolled at universities. This represented 4.2 per cent of a total
full-time enrolment of 83,600. Australian Government-sponsored
overseas students enrolled at universities totalled 1,383 or 1.7
per cent of the full-time university enrolment.
Each year recipient Governments are invited to nominate
students for training in Australia. Levels and fields of study
are determined by the governments of the recipient country depending
. upon their own varying national needs. The only limitations imposed
by the Australian Government are concerned with the relevance of
the proposed training to the economic development of the nominating
country, the availability of the proposed training in the nominating
country, the adequacy of the qualifications of the nominee to
undertake the proposed training and the capacity of Australian
institutions to provide it. Members of the Colombo Plan have
agreed among themselves that training at technician level and below
should be provided only for highly specialised instruction for which
adequate facilities are unavailable within their own or neighbouring
countries.
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Malaysia has been the largest recipient of Australian
Colombo Plan scholarships and fellowships, with some 2,300 awards
up to the end of last year. Then follows Indonesia, also with over
2,000 awards; India 1,300 and Thailand 1,200. Numbers however do
not tell the whole story, and the impact of Australian studies may
be relatively greater in some of the smaller recipient countries
than in the larger ones. The 56 Australian-trained students in the
Maldive Islands, or the 30 Bhutanese, contribute significantly
to the pooi of skills available in those countries, whereas our
much greater contribution to a country like India must remain
largely unseen. In all, over 13,000 Colombo Plan students and
trainees have trained in Australia since the commencement of the
Colombo Plan. Scholarships and fellowships have been provided for
secondary and undergraduate courses, post-graduate studies and
for academic work in research institutions. In the early days of
the Colombo Plan a high percentage of awards was taken up for these
formal courses. One interesting development, reflecting the
changing needs and priorities of the developing countries, is the
current trend towards short intensive courses outside the formal
educational institutions.
In 1972/ 73, the universities and technical colleges
accounted for only 31 per cent of the new intake of sponsored
students with 69 per cent undertaking non-formal types of training.
This was almost the exact opposite of the respective percentages
applying only five years earlier. I expect that this trend will
continue as the educational institutions within the developing
countries become more and more able to cope with their own needs,
particularly at the undergraduate and secondary schools level.
The practical courses of training to which I have just
referred are designed to meet the needs of individual students
and groups of students, and consequently follow varied patterns.
Training may consist of practical attachments in Government
departments and industry; international training courses in a
wide range of fields, mainly concerned with agriculture and food
production, administration and management, and professional and
scientific subjects; courses in the English language; and awards
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to train people to manage and control projects being set up in their
homelands by Australia. Another means of help has been assistance
to Australian universities to establish courses especially designed
. to meet the needs of the developing countries, such as the
Agricultural Development Economics course at the Australian
National University.
Australian academics and universities have themselves made
a direct and valuable contribution to Australia's role in international
education, not only through their contributions to the
formulation of Aid policies, but also by direct participation in
the business of aid. The Australian-Asian Universities Co-operation
Scheme, administered through the Australian Vice-Chancellors'
Committee, provides for a direct association between Australian
universities and universities in Indonesia, Malaysia arnd Singapore.
To avoid the dissipation of resources the area of activities has
initially been confined to disciplines related to agriculture and
food production, with the future intention of extending into
population studies. The Scheme is financed from our aid funds.
I should now like to mention Australian assistance to
educational institutions in developing countries themselves, a
somewhat less well known feature of Australian aid than the training
provided in Australia.
Under the Colombo Plan we have already provided experts and
equipment to a number of countries. For instance, in Indonesia,
Australia is providing adv ice to the Ministry of Education and
Culture on the planning of vocational training programs and the
training of technical teachers and administrators. Experts have
been sent to the Jogjakarta Vocational Training Institute to advise
on curriculum and teacher training.
In Singapore, we are providing equipment and advice for
instruction and curriculum planning at the Jurong Vocational
Institute, and lecturers and examiners for medical degree
examinations at the University of Singapore. In Malaysia,
Australia has recently equipped a number of woodwork schools.
. In Thailand, we have provided lecturers for the Language
Institute, the North Bangkok Engineering School, and equipment for
the Mahidol University and the Bangkok Technical Institute.
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In Korea, we have been assisting with instructors and
equipment at a major Technical School for a number of years, at a
cost of over half a million dollars. In laos, we have provided
supplies for primary schools and are building a Forestry School,
as well as providing instructors for the Vientiane Teachers'
Training College. I consider initiatives such as these serve a good purpose
and, as I shall mention later, this is an area to which we should
divert increasing attention.
Another area for development is that of " third country"
awards, whereby Australia provides fellowships for students from a
developing country to study in another country in the Colombo Plan
region. Until recently, the number of awards of this type was very
small, but such training offers distinct advantages. We should
encourage it wherever appropriate. I have in mind educational
institutions such as the Regional English Language Centre in
Singapore, the Civil Aviation Training Centre, the Asian Institute
of Technology in Bangkok and the International Rice Research
Institute in Manila.
I know the overriding question in many minds is whether
our aid programs are working. Various studies of the results of our
educational programs have been made. These have not been
co-ordinated, nor are they by any means comprehensive; but they
have contributed to our knowledge and appreciation of the problems
involved. I have in mind the studies made by various research
scholars on the utilisation of Australian skills within the countries
of South and South-East Asia; the effects of their Australian
experience upon students' attitudes to their homelands, their
employment on their return and the problems of communication
experienced by the foreign student abroad.
Within the Government the Department of Foreign Affairs
has conducted for many years a follow-up evaluation covering
returned students. On the initiative of Australia, the Colombo
Plan Council for Technical Co-operation has now adopted a standard
form of evaluation questionnaire directed to the recipient
governments, to obtain their assessment of the results of training.
abroad. The Departments of Foreign Affairs, Immigration and
Education have also been collaborating for the last two years with
* the Australian-National University in a study undertaken as a part
of a worldwide examination by the United Nations Institute for
Training and Research ( UNITAR) of the effects of study abroad upon
the attitudes of foreign students, in relation to the problem of
the so-called " brain drain".
These studies are a necessary part of the process of review
and assessment. Inevitably, the 23 years of Colombo Plan activity
are not an unrelieved history of success. Aspects of the programs
have come in for criticism and it would be surprising if this were
not so.* Looking at our total educational assistance, both through
the Colombo Plan and. to private students, I have been concerned to
see an ethnic and economic imbalance. Our educational aid has gone
overwhelmingly to people of the Chinese race. Much as I respect and
admire such people, we have tended to help those whose economic
circumstances in many cases would have allowed them to help
themselves. A poor student is unlikely to be able to take advantage
of cdur educational opportunities no matter how brilliant
scholastically unless he succeeds in gaining his own Government's
Inomination for a Colombo Plan Scholarship. At the same time we have
been reluctant to apply a means test to the citizens of other
countries seeking to enter Australia for education, nor to apply
other discriminatory measures.
In considering how best to ensure that benefits are more
equally open to other ethnic groups and to those in greatest need,
I believe we should be providing greater assistance than at present
for the development of educational institutions in the developing
countries themselves. I recognise that there are difficulties.
The supply of teachers and lecturers able to undertake assignments*
abroad is not unlimited, The demands for staff arising from the
Government's educational policies within Australia cannot yet be
fully assessed. There are problems in the adaptation of Australian
teachers and lecturers to the curricula and methods of other
educational systems, to an alien cultural background, and often to
a foreign language. However these are problems which I believe
can be overcome with effective planning. I would see such expanded
progress abroad as complementing continuing programs in Australia.
I also see value in extending the present system of Third
Country fellowships for regional education and training institutions.
We can provide training teams to conduct short courses within the
developing countries in fields of study where this type of assistance
can be effectively introduced. We will expand joint training courses
already offered in collaboration with the Government of New Zealand
and will investigate the possibilities of joint arrangements for
training abroad with international organisations such as the
World Bank. The Joint Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Aid drew
attention to the need to direct our assistance away from the heavy
preponderance of private students pursuing undergraduate studies
in Australia. As I have explained earlier, this readjustment has
already occurred in the Colombo Plan. Within an officially
sponsored aid program, worked out between Governments, the level
of studies can be readily adjusted to the specific needs of each
country, at its particular stage of development.
It is far more difficult, however, to influence the
aspirations of private citizens in other countries whose sights are
set upon an academic career. As I found during my visit to Thailand,
the tradition of study abroad is well established. The Thai
Government and individual citizens attach great importance to the
opportunities we have offered to their young students and we must
take due account of their views.
-I turn now to the question of the return of students to
their homeland after their studies. The objectives of our sponsored
programs -the transfer of knowledge and training to the developing
countries -would be defeated if the skills acquired abroad were not
taken home by the student. This has been a matter to which Australia
and its Colombo Plan partners have always attached considerable
importance. Indeed it was on the Australian initiative that it was
made the subject of special study by the Colombo Plan Consultative
Committee in 1972. To limit a " brain drain", the Colombo Plan
Council for Technical Co-operation, which represents all donor and
all recipient governments, requires that every trainee under the
Colombo Plan shall return home on the completion of his training.
In addition, most home governments impose a money bond or a bond
of service on their trainees to encourage their return or compensate
for the loss of their skills. This is a contract between the
recipient government and its own citizens in which the donor
government is not directly involved.
The same general arrangements apply in Australia to trainees
under other schemes for sponsored training, which extend the
Colombo Plan principle to other areas of the world.
Given these arr-angements the return of sponsored stude-nts
has not proved to be a problem. Less than 2 per cent of the total1
number of sponsored students remain in Australia, in most instances
because of the thoroughly laudable reason that they have married
Australians. Private students are in a different position. There are
at the moment approximately 10,000 private overseas students in
Australia and there have been about 40,000 in the period since 1950,
They are quite distinct from sponsored students, They have no
official backing from their own governments; they are enrolled by
direct personal application to Australian institutions; they
provide their own financ-ia. resources to travel to Australia and t,-o
maintain and educate themselves. Nevertheless, government subsidies
-to educational. institutions in respect of places occupied by private
ovecse: s students amoun-ted to about $ 9.5 million in 1972. My
Government's abolition of tertiary fees will considerably increase
indirect assistance to private students of this kind.
Private students have been coming to Australia since the
beginning of the century. The first arrangements for student entry
were made in 1904. Over the years many thousands of private Asian
students have studied in Australia and returned home to help in
the development of their countries.
Until 1973 the private overseas students program was
considered an adjunct to aid to developing countries. My
Government's objectives in reviewing the admission of private students
has been to place emphasis on good relations and cultural exchange.
Under our new policy private students continue to enter Australia on
a temporary basis; but if successful private students wish to remain
in Australia and can meet the normal migration criteria, the
Australian Government will no longer compel them to depart. As in
the past, I expect that most private students will continue to see
their future in their own homelands. We have been inclined to
exaggerate -the attractions of Australia to the young people of other
countries. The ties of family and friends, their obligations to
their fellow countrymen and their own natural attachment to the land
of their birth will draw most of the students home when their studies
are completed. Some will wish to remain, including some whose skills
are also needed in their own countries.
In my recent Asian tour some coiuntries, notably Singapore,
expressed concern at the contributory effect this policy would have
on the " brain drain" and the loss of skilled personnel. I consider
the onus most properly lie on the home country to impose the
limitations and barriers or conditions that it considers necessary.
It must also bear the odium or responsibility of requiring its
students to return. I have agreed with the Prime Minister of
Singapore that in future all Singapore private students should be
officially sponsored by the Government of Singapore to ensure their
return to Singapore at the conclusion of their studies. There could
be cases where humanitarian considerations might require a depar-ture
from this principle. Mr Lee agreed that this could be so.
In looking at the results achieved by the Colombo Plan
in thp educational area, we have to remember that we are not
dealing only with statistics but with human beings. Not that the
statistics are unimpressi-ve. More than 13,000 sponsored students
have passed through the scheme up to the end of 1973. Sponsored
overseas students' results at the annual examinations of Australian
universities have been very satisfactory, with a pass rate of over
per cent in 1972 ( the last year for which figures are available).
That is a tribute to the care with which they were selected, their
personal efforts, and the assistance they received from their tutors
and mentors here. But impressive and important as these figures
are, they are less significant than the contributions that these
students have made to the economic and social development of their
countries and the effects that they have had upon our relationships
Viith their own governments and peoples.
We have trained under the Colombo Plan 1,800 engineers,
2,500 educationists, 900 agriculturalists, 900 medical and health
workers, 550 nurses, and over 1, C00 public administrators. I can
list for you Members of Parliament, Governors of Provinces, Heads
of Departments, senior scientists, professors, and a host of senior
and middle administrators in Asian countries who have received their
education and training with us in Australia. These are facts. They
are a record of important achievement. But they are not the full
story. An equally important, less easily defined, achievement is
the growth of bonds between Australia and the developing countries,
a heightened level of understanding between us, and perhaps most
gratifying of all, a withering away of xenophobia, isolationism and
racism in Australia. I have no doubt that your seminar will make
its own important contribution to these great objectives of
enlightenment, tolerance and understanding."
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