‘Random’ visitors making money from public school visits, warns Latham

An alarm has been raised about “random” visitors and bizarre workshops being run in public school classrooms at taxpayer expense.

Public schools will crack down on the vast array of so called gurus and “random people from the entertainment industry” making money from visiting classrooms to talk to students about mental health and toxic masculinity.

Among those providers set to go under the microscope to make sure visitors to schools will include personalities who provide “resilience doughnut” training — a service education Department chief Mark Scott could not define when asked by Upper House MP Mark Latham in a budget estimates hearing on Wednesday.

“Is that a riddle chair?” Mr Scott said to Mr Latham.

Other bureaucrats appearing at the hearing drew a blank as well.

Mr Latham said: “I am just urging we get more information about what these Hare Krishna type people are doing in our schools and get a handle on all this activity and all the money that they earn. A lot of people are getting very rich on this gear.”

“Resilience doughnut — boy oh boy … obviously it is of concern to me that this stuff is on at least one annual report of a school that I have seen, but no-one here on the department’s executive — the best decision-makers we have got — knows what a resilience doughnut is.”

Mark Latham has questioned the number of ‘random visitors’ making money from school visits and workshops. Picture: Richard Dobson

Education Department Deputy Secretary Georgina Harrison said they were developing a plan to regulate who goes into schools.

“We are creating a panel of providers for exactly these types of services into schools which will help our schools make good decisions about the support that is available to them,” she said.

“There is a very crowded marketplace and we want to help our schools make good decisions for the use of their money and that is why we will be creating that panel of providers.”

Mr Latham earlier in the day questioned the value of minor celebrities going into schools to talk to students about mental health and asked the boffins to investigate them.

“Can you also look at Gotcha4Life? Their principal is Gus Worland, who lists his qualifications to go into our schools and talk to our students about mental health as a TV and radio personality, award-winning Toshiba salesmen and friend of Hugh Jackman,” he said.

Bureaucrats now say who goes into schools will be monitored by experts to make sure schools were not wasting money. iStock image.

Mr Latham also recounted a male student from a Sydney high school who said he fell behind with schoolwork because the boys were sent on a course called Tomorrow Man which lectured them about toxic masculinity and domestic violence.

“All the girls had normal classes and I was behind for a week as I missed a full day’s work” the boy was quoted as saying.

“They talk about suicide which I agree is an issue but they say that domestic violence is more important and that masculinity is the real issue that causes suicide and is the same reason for domestic violence … I feel like the aim for the whole thing was to make us feel sad or show remorse for stuff we didn’t do,” the boy said.

Mr Latham asked Department staff to look into the program and check the qualifications of the people behind Tomorrow Man because “only one of them has any sort of mental health or educational qualifications.”

“(Are) we really at the point where random people from the entertainment industry — and I do not think many senior students would know Gus Worland from a bar of soap — get to go into our schools and inflict this sort of material upon students who should have their self-esteem built up, not ripped down,” Mr Latham said.