Steep learning curve for all

Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs Mal Brough has placed responsibility for school attendance squarely with parents and leaders in remote indigenous communities. His message to the seemingly reluctant community of Wadeye, a focal point in the recent debate about violence and abuse, is that alleviating social dysfunction in communities is “a two-way street” and school attendance falls on their side of the shared responsibility divide. Wadeye’s response is that the school only has places for 400 of the community’s 700 children (of which 100 reportedly attend) and that governments should first provide extra classrooms and teachers.

School attendance is increasingly seen as a key goal, and battleground, in indigenous affairs. Most recently, the need to address attendance featured in a report for the Menzies Research Institute by a former minister in the Keating government, Gary Johns. He argued that, in addition to school attendance, more thorough education reform is needed.

What Johns is absolutely right about is the urgent need for both school attendance and education reform, although a one-size-fits-all model is flawed. Governments should not think the problems are all on the demand side and they can do no more than offer a few sticks and carrots to make children attend school. Governments directly control the supply of education and are often the only provider in remote communities. They can address systemic constraints in the education system that contribute to the dire problems in remote communities across northern Australia.

And the problems are certainly as dire as recent reports suggest. Attendance, achievement and retention are real problems. On Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula, it is estimated that only one in two Aboriginal children attend school on a particular day. In the Northern Territory, only 20 per cent of Aboriginal children in remote communities achieve the Year 3 reading benchmark and only 21 per cent achieve the Year 5 benchmark. In Queensland, only 40 per cent of Aboriginal children make the transition from primary to high school and even fewer make it to Year 12.

Children cannot get a good education when they attend primary school sporadically, then drop out of the system entirely in their early teenage years. Without English literacy, basic numeracy, and at least 10 years of school education, their chance of having meaningful choices in the modern world are negligible.

Of course, governments cannot single-handedly bring about the required turnaround. Even if governments can get children into classrooms, they cannot make them learn. Children, parents and communities all need to take responsibility.

But governments can remove the legislative and policy constraints to reform of the education system. Here are three suggestions.

First, governments should permit other school models. A single on-site public primary school for a dozen or so children in a community provides no choice to parents. Charter schools and virtual schools in larger hubs could take advantage of emerging technologies to service more children across widely spread communities. Teachers could focus on students of a particular age group and would be better placed to ensure the age group is achieving benchmarks. Accountability and performance requirements would, of course, be paramount.

Second, governments should allow other teacher preparation models. Education departments struggle to find willing teachers for remote primary schools, yet persist with mandating courses and qualifications. This continues despite evidence that mandatory preparation courses do not provide consistent teacher quality, and may deter quality candidates. Education departments could learn from the Teach for America program in the US. The program recruits high-achieving college graduates from all academic fields to commit to teaching for two years in disadvantaged urban and rural schools and provides rigorous upfront training and ongoing support.

Third, governments should put in place better reporting and accountability models. Aggregated data obscures the performance of individual remote schools. Systemic failure to achieve against literacy and numeracy benchmarks should be screaming for prompt intervention.

School attendance is critical. But governments need to reform education in remote communities to allow this to happen.

Education will not protect abused children, halt domestic violence or silence gang rioting. But the social dysfunction of remote communities and economic isolation of their residents will continue unless we address the underlying issues. Even a basic education will go a long way towards equipping Aboriginal children with the social and economic skills to seize opportunities inside and outside their community.

Kirsten Storry is a policy analyst working on the Indigenous Affairs Research Program at the Centre for Independent Studies.