The Hazelwood mine fire had a considerable impact on the environment and public health, and had a significant follow-on effect on students and their academic results. What lessons can we learn from their experience in the wake of disasters?
Monash Education’s Emily Berger and Matthew Carroll explain their latest research.
The Hazelwood mine fire was considered one of the most significant air quality incidents in Victoria’s history. Monash University recently completed a study on the impact of the mine fire disaster on NAPLAN results of primary and secondary school students.
The fire, which burned from February - March 2014 in the Morwell open cut coal mine next to the Hazelwood Power Station, blanketed Morwell and surrounding areas in smoke and ash. The smoke and ash forced two Morwell primary schools to relocate during the event and considerably impacted the operations of the other schools in the town.
Students’ NAPLAN results were accessed from the years before the mine fire to after the mine fire.
Secondary school performance delayed 18 months
Results showed primary school students’ academic development was not impacted by the mine fire, but secondary students experienced an 18 month delay in academic progression from before to after the event.
This delay in academic progress was evident for secondary students attending schools closer to the mine fire, which was not found among students attending secondary schools further from the fire.
We also explored differences between students with higher and lower emotional distress from the mine fire, however students’ emotional distress did not influence results.
Recommendations
The extra academic support provided to primary school students at the time of the mine fire may have buffered primary students against the effects of the event. This has implications for research on the effects of COVID-19 school closures on students’ academic performance.
However, comparing different disaster events, such as COVID-19 and the Hazelwood mine fire is challenging.
A similar study after the 2002 Prestige oil spill disaster in Spain showed adolescents living in a more heavily polluted area had lower academic achievement compared to those from less impacted areas.
Closer to home, primary school children in communities impacted by the Black Saturday fires experienced greater academic delay four years after the fires, compared to children in less exposed areas. Our study did not find a similar effect from the Hazelwood mine fire on primary aged children.
We are now working to understand whether there were specific areas of delay, such as in reading, writing or maths, across a larger sample of students in Morwell and surrounding areas. This research will further illustrate the impact of environmental disasters on academic outcomes of Australian students.
Covid-19 vs mine fires
Research on COVID-19 provides insight into the impacts of school disruption on educational achievement. A systematic review of the effects of school closures during COVID-19 found a negative effect on educational achievement, particularly in younger students and those from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
While most studies found evidence of a negative effect of COVID-19 on student achievement, examples of improved performance were noted. Prior familiarity with online learning was highlighted as one of the likely reasons for students’ improvement, as these students did not have to adapt to online learning and so were less impacted by school closures.
The suggestion that prior familiarity with online learning offered some protection from the impacts of COVID-19 school closures is in line with our earlier findings where staff from a specialist school told us that the prior adoption of trauma-informed practice made it easier for students to meet the challenges that came with the Hazelwood mine fire.
Taken together, these findings on the impacts of environmental disasters and COVID-19 show that disruption to schooling can have considerable impacts on educational achievement, but also highlight the potential for interventions to be put into place to protect learning outcomes of students.
It is critical for schools and teachers to monitor students’ academic performance following disasters and be prepared to intervene as required.
The results of this Hazelwood Health Study paper have been published in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy. Our earlier paper on the impacts in a specialist trauma-informed school was published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma in 2018.
More information about the Hazelwood mine fire can be found via the Hazelwood Health Study website.
References
Berger, E., Carroll, M., Maybery, D., & Harrison, D. (2018). Disaster impacts on students and staff from a specialist, trauma-informed Australian school. Journal of Child and Adolescent Trauma, 11(4), 521-530.
Berger, E., Gao, C., Broder, J. C., Campbell, T., Maybery, D., & Carroll, M. (Accepted/In press). The impact of a mine fire and smoke event on academic outcomes for primary and secondary school students. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.
Hammerstein, S., König, C., Dreisörner, T., & Frey, A. (2021). Effects of COVID-19-Related School Closures on Student Achievement-A Systematic Review. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 746289.
‘Harrowing’: Trauma caused by Morwell coalmine fire set high school students back 18 months. The Guardian.
