Call for Compulsory safety awareness training to protect
international students in Australia
3 March 2010
Melbourne, Victoria – Australia. Safety awareness experts today called for the Australian
Government to ensure that international students are provided with adequate personal safety
information after a spate of attacks that have endangered the lives of foreign nationals and put
at risk Australia’s reputation as an education destination.
“Community leaders, the police and educators are operating in a policy vacuum when it comes to
ensuring international students are safe living and studying in Australia,” says Dean O’Loughlin, a
longstanding community support worker who now provides personal safety training to international
students across Australia though his Personal Safety Solutions business venture.
“The absence of proper government policy to safeguard international students is producing tragic
consequences not only for students but also for Australia’s reputation as a place to study and do
business in,” he says.
A
spate of violent assaults on Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney has been reported in both the
Australian and Indian media over the past 12 months. Around 110,000 Indian students are now
studying in Australia, making a major contribution to the nation’s A$15.5 billion education export
market. Government reports suggests the attacks have led to a fall in enquiries for 2010 enrolments.
The Australian Government has received preliminary recommendations on international student
welfare from the Baird Report, and the Commonwealth Senate has also reported on the issue, but
experts say a more realistic approach is needed.
“The Senate recommendation that international students be provided with personal safety information
before coming to Australia simply isn’t practical,” says Mr O’Loughlin. “International education agents
in places like India and China have neither the resources nor inclination to provide safety training –
they actually have incentives to gloss over these issues in order to sign-up students.”
“We believe the government should work with education providers in Australia to deal with violence
against international students, as educators here have the best awareness of the conditions and also
have the resources to provide assistance,” he says. “This issue isn’t going to resolve itself without
government intervention – it may be Indian students today, but in the future it could be students from
other countries, such as China, Vietnam, and the Arabian states.”
The envoy sent by the Australian Government to India in November last year is also unlikely to yield
much in the way of personal safety training for prospective students, say people who help send Indian
students abroad.
“The majority of education agents in India have very little awareness of the living conditions that
international students will encounter overseas,” says Mr Akhil Shahani, who sits on the Confederation
of Indian Industry’s Higher Education Taskforce and has been facilitating international exchanges
between Indian and overseas education institutions for several years.
“Most agents are very small operators working outside established education institutions, beyond the
reach of government regulation. Even with the best intentions, the Indian Government would find it
almost impossible to get them to train students on how to live safely overseas.”
The Senate Report’s focus on training to protect student welfare comes from the finding that many
attacks could be prevented if students had a greater safety awareness, including that many attacks
have been opportunistic robberies targeting valuables such as computer laptops. According to the
Senate Report, international students may be inadequately prepared because the National Code of
Practice leaves it to education providers to decide themselves what is ‘sufficient’ security information.
As a community worker Mr O’Loughlin has been aware of these issues for some time and in June
2009 started Personal Safety Solutions with his partner Margaret O’Loughlin, who has previously
taught international students. Theirs is the first Australian business set up to provide specialist safety
training for international students
Their results suggest that safety training provided in Australia will have a positive impact on the lives
of students here.
“Students who have attended training courses given by Personal Safety Solutions said that they feel
confident in their surroundings and much more able to avoid dangerous situations,” says Gurhan
Araci, Director of Field Placement Solutions, who organises field placements for international students
and liaises with Australian education institutions and safety trainers.
“Personal Safety Solutions offers an accredited course which is based on avoiding rather than
countering responses to violence – students are not incited to take matters into their own hands and
are given confidence in reporting issues to the police,” Mr Araci says.
“Personal safety training is a very small thing to ask of our international education system when you
consider the stakes,” adds Mr O’Loughlin. “Today’s international students will be the business and
political leaders that Australians deal with tomorrow.”
About Personal Safety Solutions
Personal Safety Solutions was launched in June 2009 and is the first Australian company to provide
specialist safety awareness training to international students that are studying or planning to study
here. The Melbourne, Victoria-based company is headed by Dean and Margaret O’Loughlin who have
strong awareness of the issues affecting international students through their backgrounds as
community support workers and teachers at Australian colleges serving foreign nationals.
The company works directly with international colleges across Australia to provide student training
and its personnel are accredited AVADE™ trainers. The AVADE safety awareness system is the
leading safety awareness training methodology in North America and has been delivered to
thousands of individuals, agencies and corporations. AVADE provides participants with the habits,
skills and actions to enhance personal safety and to avoid dangerous situations, crime and violence.
For more information, please contact:
Dean O’Loughlin
M: +61 437 870 988
Managing Director
E: info@personalsafetysolutions.com.au
Personal Safety Solutions Pty Ltd
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