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28 Speak Out April 2017
THE NSW DEPARTMENT of Education’s Speech Pathology
in Schools Resource Project is well underway and has sparked
considerable interest from SPA members and non-members in
addition to other key stakeholders.
As part of this project SPA conducted a national survey of speech
pathologists working in education.
We had an overwhelming response to the survey across Australia
with 715 respondents; 70 per cent were SPA members and 30
per cent were non-members!
The results are in...
National survey of speech pathologists working in education
Key results...
Preliminary analysis of the survey data
also showed that:
• there are a range of employment scenarios across
the states and territories, however 48% of speech
pathologists are employed by the Department of
Education or catholic education;
• 80% of speech pathologists work in government
schools with the remainder working in catholic and
independent schools;
• 93% of SPs use a collaborative or consultative
approach with principals;
• 95% of SPs use a collaborative or consultative
approach with teachers and/or the learning support
team;
• 92% of SPs use a collaborative or consultative
approach with psychologists, school counsellors,
welfare staff and/or other allied health practitioners;
• 75% of SPs work with education support staff,
teacher aides and speech therapy assistants in
individual therapy programs; 65% use these staff in
individualised in-class support; 55% use these staff
in small group therapy; 33% use these staff in whole
classroom support;
• 84% of SPs have some form of contact with the
parents of the students they work with;
• the most common disorders/difficulties worked with
were language (95%), literacy (82%), articulation/
phonology (77%), learning (56%) and social skills/
pragmatics (54%).
As part of the NSW’s resource project, key stakeholder
forums were conducted in Sydney in collaboration with the
department of education to gather information regarding
the content of the resource and the information received
was invaluable. Most representatives had some awareness
of what speech pathologists can offer, however our scope
of practice needs to be widely marketed. Collaboration
with school staff, maintaining respectful relationships and
adopting a whole school approach were key points raised.
3% of speech pathologists work in
secondary schools
56% use the individual pull out model
63% of SPs self-manage their caseloads
21% are directed by school staff and
16% are directed by departmental/CEO
staff and policies
80% of SPs are not involved in preparing
school educational reports
56% were not involved in formal transition
planning for students