Indigenous-Education-Review_DRAFT

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Review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory Bruce Wilson Visits to schools indicated that students in the secondary years who have not been regular attenders are unlikely to re‐engage effectively and constitute a significant problem for schools. Significant numbers of secondary‐aged young people are missing from school in remote communities. Where schools managed to get some non‐attenders to come to school, attendance was very sporadic. In many schools, there was evidence of bullying of younger students, disruptive behaviour and role modeling that had a negative effect on primary‐aged children. One potential unintended consequence of very successful implementation of the new Remote School Attendance Strategy could be rapid increases in the number of disaffected and disengaged secondary‐aged students attending school. There is a widespread view about the relative ineffectiveness of current efforts through re‐engagement centres and other initiatives under Every Child Every Day to work with young people who have substantially disengaged from school. Of the many hundreds of young people who have been involved, it appears very few are re‐engaged for any substantial time. The addition of a significant further group of disaffected, largely illiterate secondary students unused to the routines of schooling would constitute a massive disruption. Even larger schools would find it difficult to manage a group like this. The review saw examples of this problem arising from the presence of even small numbers of these students. This review is focused on the future. The education system has not to date identified a solution for this significant group of disengaged secondary‐aged young people and the review has not been able to identify a solution. The approach recommended here is designed to ensure that future generations of students include a much smaller proportion of such students so that re‐engagement, if it is needed, is more likely to be successful. In the situation faced by the Northern Territory, resources should be allocated by preference where they are likely to achieve the greatest improvement: to primary children and to secondary children who are attending. As noted above, proposals elsewhere in the report should also have an effect on attendance. DRAFT The Northern Territory should aim to ensure that children who are now in their early years become the first recent generation to attend consistently and fully gain the benefits of their education. Who is responsible for attendance? The review argues that some current attendance efforts have the unintended consequence of reinforcing the situation in which communities, parents and students fail to take responsibility for attendance. Schools that collect children from home, feed them, offer them school uniforms, wash them and take responsibility for some of their health issues, raise questions about what responsibility is accepted by parents. These measures place no responsibility on students and families and provide no incentive for self‐management of attendance. In this respect, they are the equivalent of welfare programs that meet basic needs but provide no incentive for self‐efficacy: essential but potentially giving rise to unintended negative consequences. Communities will not be viable unless they resume responsibility for their own children. For that reason we argue that the success of Australian Government initiatives and the stronger measures under Every Child Every Day are critical to the future not only of the children but also of their families and communities. These measures, combined with the range of other 87
Review of Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory Bruce Wilson proposals in this review, have the potential to strengthen community support and responsibility for schooling and improve the benefits gained by children. The review also recommends that all schools adopt programs of information and incentives to encourage all children and their families and communities to take additional responsibility for attendance. The information might be in the form of regularly updated attendance graphs for each child showing their percentage attendance over time and for the most recent period. This information should be provided to each child, each family and the community if appropriate, and targets set for the achievement of attendance. In each case, the focus of targets should be on improvement as well as absolute attendance. Targets should also be linked to what the research tells us about the level of attendance that is correlated with measurable improvements in student achievement. Children attending below those inflection points should be rewarded for exceeding the key points. Other matters Non‐enrolment A number of respondents to the review referred to a disturbing suggestion that there are material numbers of young people in the Northern Territory who have never enrolled in school, or who have been off the rolls for substantial periods of time. More than one respondent offered estimates of the numbers: these estimates clustered round 2000 students, and it was commonly assumed that these students were predominantly Indigenous. There was little empirical evidence to support this contention, although one respondent referred to a 2007 study conducted in one regional area that identified about 110 such students. One assumption was that these young people were largely located in the approximately 470 Homelands that have no educational facility. It is not clear whether these young people are included in Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) statistics. The issue of unenrolled students is one that the review has been unable to resolve. It is recommended that a study be undertaken to map the number and location of unenrolled students with the goal of establishing programs to encourage their enrolment. These programs should focus on primary‐aged children, consistent with the approach recommended by the review. DRAFT Disruptive community programs A consistent theme in the review was concern about the negative attendance effect of a range of other activities and initiatives. These included community programs run during school times, such as rodeos, football carnivals and shows including the Darwin Show. Respondents also referred to the timing of royalty payments, timing of funerals and other ceremonial activities and service policies of community shops. These are largely out of the control of schools and are difficult to influence. There have, however, been Department and Government initiatives to address these issues with communities, agencies and organisations responsible for these activities. There are examples of success in ameliorating some of these influences, such as the Groote Eylandt community program linking attendance to royalty payments, and the Oenpelli effort to manage the timing of funerals. One initiative trialed in recent years is the change to the school year at Gunbalanya. Formal evaluation of these programs is proposed to determine 88
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