Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, , 8:33:25 to 8:39:37
An overview of the Commonwealth Prac Payment (paid practicum) scheme is provided, including the 64,000 unique students who have received payments. The department breaks down recipients by discipline, including nursing, teaching, and social work.
Topics: Education, Employment
Speakers: Mr. Brett Nordstrom, Speaker 36, Ms. Madonna Morton, Unknown Speaker, Ms. Jasmina Joldic
>> Thank you J. Thank you for your time. Um this afternoon I've got some questions about the paid pack scheme. I really welcome step from the government. Commend the government on this. Hopefully the first in then expanding it to other students who I think really need this. Medical students, veterary students, other allied health students with high placement loads. They're currently not uh covered. Um and this is something that I've worked extensively on with um the member for Dr. Helen Haines and her team. and I'm asking the below questions on her and her team's Since the program began in July 2025, how many students have received a Commonwealth pay uh PR payment?
>> Thank you, Senator. We're going to Nordstrom. Mr. Nordstrom, thank you.
>> Thank you, Senator. Uh Brett Nordstrom, assistant secretary, higher education program delivery branch N. Sorry. >> Apologies, Senator. All good. >> It's too excitable. Um I can confirm uh that uh around 64,000 students have received the payment since the program commenced on the 1st of July 2025. Uh that uh is uh unique students. Some students may have re received a payment in the second semester of last year and then may have received a second payment in the first semester of this year. So that 64,000 would be unique students across that
total period. Great. And um can you break that down by uh university or tertiary provider, state and territory and degree studied or do you need to take that on notice?
>> I might need to take that level of detail on notice. I can give you a high level breakdown of u the disciplines.
>> Yeah, great.
>> Uh if that is of assistance, Senator Um so I can uh say that there's um around 31,18 uh in nursing around 1760 uh in midwifery around 1112 in a combined program where they a student might be studying both nursing and midwiffrey as a combined program uh about 112 uh sorry 1,112 and teaching uh was around 26,879 uh and social work around 3,91.
>> Great. Thank you very much. Um, and of students who've received the payment, how many are from regional, rural, and remote areas?
>> We don't have that breakdown yet. Uh, Senator, so we've just received um provider reporting on the 30th of September. Um, that covers uh the second six-month period. We need to actually um analyze that data and compare it against uh taxi data holdings inside the department to do demographic analysis. We won't have that just yet.
>> Okay. Um
>> um Senator Madonna Morton, first assistant secretary, participation and student experience division. We do have the breakdown by state and territory >> uh for the CPP that the original program
>> and if you can take take the um regional rural remote on on notice.
>> We will.
>> Um and if you can give me the state and territory now and then if you do you have it for the first six months, the regional
months with us, but we might go through just the state and territory data for you now and then we'll see what we've
>> Uh so, Senator, for um the total number of students in uh New South Wales, uh we believe 21,698. Uh for students in Victoria, we believe it's 15,962. Uh for students in Queensland, 11,946. Uh, Western Australia 6,637, South Australia 4,417, Tasmania uh, 1412, ACT uh, 779 uh, and Northern Territory 1,12. And just in the context of the ACT senator which may be of interest to you particularly was um uh the University of CRA's uh social work course which commenced in uh 2026 which was eligible for the program.
>> Great. Thank you very much. >> How many uh First Nations students do you have that number?
>> Uh not for the full year. Again that goes to the demographic analysis we will still need to do. Uh the other thing I would just say Senator I've given you what will seem like reasonably precise numbers. We're still doing some data validation on that. They could move a little bit. So um appreciate if you could take them as indicative. Yeah,
sure. Thank you. Um, and then when you do crunch this data, maybe on notice to if you can provide any other information on students receiving P payments such as whether they are undertaking their placements uh rurally or in what clinical settings if you do have that um level of uh granularity. on the broader policy, um was cost a factor in determining which course uh to make eligible for paid pack.
>> Um Senator, just just before you get to that, um I just think I may have some demographic data for the first 6 months just given that you were asking. Um so I think we had uh around 12% for students with disability. Uh we had uh 22.6% 6% uh for low SCES students. Uh we had First Nations students at about 3.2%. Uh women were about 81.4% which is not surprising given the fairly highly feminized nature of these courses. >> Um and regional remote um 25.1%. So that was uh in relation to the first 6 months where we had done a bit of that demographic analysis.
>> Great. Well, thank you. And then back to the I guess how these courses were were picked um when when the government added a whole um bunch more uh was was cost factored into that?