Indigenous-Education-Review_DRAFT

Review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory
Bruce Wilson
community. They cover areas including early childhood, schooling, health, housing, safe communities,
governance and leadership, planning and infrastructure and youth sport and recreation. The LIPs have
been established and are in the process of implementation. The intention is that they will be revised
over time as progress is made and as a result of negotiation and discussion with each community.
The agreements reached with each community cover a range of elements. The Australian Government
Coordinator General’s October 2013 report (dealing with all 29 schools involved nationally) suggests
that this breadth limits the effectiveness of the approach: ‘In future, these plans should be simpler and
identify a smaller number of key priorities that will focus effort and make a sustainable difference’. The
response by the Northern Territory Coordinator General supports this reservation:
The burden of administration created by quarterly monitoring of all Local Implementation Plan
actions, which in the Territory equates to over 1,000 individual actions, is unsustainable and
unproductive. The approach to Local Implementation Plans requires review, and in particular with
respect to creating a methodology that enables the prioritisation of key actions that will impact
most significantly upon access to services in individual Remote Service Delivery sites (Kendrick, in
Gleeson, 2013: 50).
The report argues that the plans show that services based on locally identified needs are effective and
have encouraged agencies to ‘look beyond program boundaries’ to cooperate. But it also notes that ‘the
energy and whole of government commitment has diminished over time’. While a great deal of data
were collected, they were ‘difficult to interpret into meaningful statements of progress’ because of the
absence of agreed independent systems of monitoring and reporting (Gleeson, 2013: 1‐2).
This review supports the principle of integrated service delivery, but the evidence suggests that the LIPs
have not provided a broadly effective response to this need. The development of Child and Family
Centres might provide a more effective model (see Chapter 6).
Local cultural training
All schools should be sensitive to their cultural contexts, and should seek to reflect local culture in their
physical and educational environments. It is important, however, to recognise that the purpose of this is
to enhance the effectiveness of schools in teaching students and gaining the support and participation
of parents and the community. The review does not support the view, articulated by some respondents,
that schools should be a source of cultural maintenance, or that schools in remote communities should
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have different purposes from those in other parts of the Territory or Australia. Cultural responsiveness
should not deflect schools from their core purposes.
For this reason, requirements of principals and teachers to source and undertake local cultural training
should be clearly defined. Where local communities have the will and capacity to provide effective
induction and cultural training, principals and teachers should take advantage of this opportunity. In
some communities, however, there is at best a limited capacity to conduct and support such activities.
In these cases, community engagement expectations of principals should be limited to engaging with
key community members, communicating effectively with parents and the community about school
expectations, and becoming familiar with local cultural practices with relevance to education. Principals
will also engage with communities through specific other responsibilities, notably concerning student
attendance. It is recommended that all principals seek to identify a local cultural mentor to support
these processes.
The Gleeson report recommends that:
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