Indigenous-Education-Review_DRAFT

Review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory
Bruce Wilson
For the purposes of this review, the key finding in the report concerned the distinction
between reform approaches found to be effective in low‐ and high‐performing systems. In
summary, poorer performing systems (including bush schools in the Northern Territory) do
best when they tighten control and provide technical training. As the report argues:
the main challenge of systems engaged in the poor to fair and fair to good stages
is to
minimize performance variation between classes and across schools. This requires
ensuring that lower‐skill teachers are given the support of high‐quality teaching
materials and lesson plans that can closely guide what they do on a daily basis
(ibid.: 44).
By contrast, high performing systems (including town schools in the Northern Territory) are
best improved by a loosening of central control, a reliance on evidence‐informed schoolbased
practice, teacher collaboration and standard‐setting, and a gradual movement from
the sole use of common standardised assessments to the inclusion of school and teacher
self‐evaluation. Where ‘lower‐performing systems focus on raising the floor…higher
performing ones focus on opening up the ceiling’ (Ibid.).
This is a useful way of thinking about how to take action for improvement in the ’two
systems’. While the Northern Territory has a dramatically different economic background
from the kinds of countries that generate levels of school achievement seen among
Indigenous children in bush schools in the Territory, this economic advantage has not flowed
through into educational achievement. The various phases of reform in recent years in the
Northern Territory have not achieved the kinds of outcomes that sponsors were hoping for,
or the kinds of improvements catalogued in the McKinsey report, among Indigenous
children in bush locations.
It is the argument of this review that different forms of performance improvement are likely
to be effective in the different school settings within the Northern Territory. Poorer
performing systems in the McKinsey sample focused first on achieving basic literacy and
numeracy levels. Only when those goals were achieved did they focus on:
DRAFT
how to configure the foundations of their system, including the creation of systems
for data tracking, teacher accountability, finance, organization, and pedagogy (Ibid.:
34).
Schools are not entirely responsible for the situation described in this chapter. As was noted
earlier, there are multiple factors of disadvantage that affect their capacity to generate
substantial educational outcomes. But the current state of affairs for bush students must
change, and this will require changes in the way the Department of Education and its schools
are organised and operate.
It is not suggested that prescriptions for improvement in the bush regions of the Northern
Territory should be identical with those for third world countries. But approaches should
also differ from those for higher performing systems, such as the other system represented
in town schools in the Northern Territory. This report seeks to propose initiatives that will
take account of this critical difference.
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