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World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education

Tom Calma,
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Social Justice Commissioner and
national Race Discrimination Commissioner

Australian Human Rights Commission

at the

Rod Laver Arena
9 December 2008

Good evening Aunties and Uncles, brothers and sisters and friends who have travelled the globe to be here with us in Melbourne Australia. Thanks for your attendance and thanks too, to the organisers of this conference. It is truly an honour to stand before you this evening to address a topic dear to all of us – Indigenous education.

But before I do let me acknowledge the Wurundjeri and Boonerwrung peoples of the Kulin Nation, the traditional owners of this country, and pay my respects to the elders and their ancestors. The Wurundjeri and Boonerwrung peoples, like traditional owners the world over, are the original educators who mastered the sciences, engineering, astronomy, sociology, medicine, languages and so on......

I am going to begin my presentation by talking about Bilingual education. Bilingual education is very relevant to this conference. in fact it represents all of the conference themes, ‘Respecting Tradition’, ‘Living with Competing knowledge Systems’, and ‘Beyond the Horizon’. I will talk about the ways in which it is practised here in Australia and I will focus on the educational benefits of this learning methodology. I will also be discussing the legacy that Bilingual education provides for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, now and into the future ...

The second part of this presentation will be my observations about the educational preconditions and practices that best inspire and inform Indigenous students in this country. The practices and principles are ones which are consistent with a human rights-based approach. So there will be some discussion about what a human rights approach to education can look like.

So first to Bilingual education. Those of us here who are familiar with Bilingual education will know that it is an educational methodology that is about building histories, supporting our unique identities, understanding our knowledge systems and developing and sustaining resilient and engaged communities.

You might be interested to know that of the 9,581 schools that exist in Australia today, only nine of them are Bilingual schools... nine precious schools...[1]

I am sure that Bilingual education has been the subject of many workshops of this conference and no doubt if you attended one of these sessions you will have heard that Bilingual education is ‘enriched learning’ wherever it happens in the world.

The Bilingual model is an educational framework and a practice which builds a cultural bridge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous languages and knowledge systems. Here in Australia, Bilingual education brings together the cultural richness of two worlds – teaching children to walk in both the Indigenous world and the non-Indigenous world.

The nine Bilingual schools in Australia are in some of the remotest regions of this country. They are located in areas where Indigenous language is the lingua franca and nearly all transactions in the community occur in Indigenous languages. English is generally heard only through television and through interactions with non-Indigenous people who are living and working on Indigenous land.

Bilingual schools instruct students in the mother tongue in early years of schooling. They assist students to establish their first literacies in their Indigenous languages while progressively transferring the learning skills and literacies to English. In Australia the Bilingual model is practiced in two ways. Some schools have a 50 – 50 model whereby students study all curriculum areas in both English and their Indigenous languages in equal share. Under the 50 – 50 model, students learn mostly in the Indigenous language at Pre-school and in Year 1 and 2, but from about Year 3 onwards, English and the vernacular are given roughly equal time in the school day.

The second Bilingual model is known as the Staircase model. This model prefers a progressive transfer to English throughout the years of primary school. The earlier years of schooling are predominantly taught in the Indigenous language with a progressive introduction of English. For example, Pre-school and Year 1 students learn predominantly in their Indigenous vernacular with half an hour of English per day. By Year 3 the amount of English instruction has increased to two hours per day and by Years 7 and 8 the students have transferred over to English and they have one hour of teaching in the Indigenous language per day.

We all know that knowledge and learning is scaffolded. We build on what we know, and we progressively add and enhance our learning. This is the theoretical framework on which the Bilingual model is based. Students begin to learn, and learn how to learn in their mother tongue, and then transfer the skills and literacies to the English language.

The Bilingual model has educational and psychological benefits for students, as well as being a methodology which enhances academic achievement.[2] This view is supported by international evidence. A 2005 study of English language learners analysed the results of 17 studies of English language learning. The findings of this meta - analysis were that Bilingual education is [and I quote] “consistently superior to all-English approaches”. The Report concluded that:

...bilingual education programs are effective in promoting academic achievement, and ... sound educational policy [and] should permit and even encourage the development and implementation of bilingual education programs.[3]

The nine Bilingual schools in Australia represent the pinnacle of what is achievable in preserving and transferring Indigenous languages and culture through education. In my view Bilingual schools are models for sustainable Indigenous education the world over – even where Indigenous languages are lost or where only fragments of the language exist. Why? Because it is not just the language transference model that characterises the Bilingual approach; it is the fact that these schools are - by definition - in partnership with the local community. In fact the Bilingual approach reflects and teaches the local living history, and the schools are led and sustained by local Indigenous people. Education is integrated into the community and led by people who are part of the community and part of the students’ lives outside of the classroom.

I’ll talk more about integrated education approaches later... because now I’d like to talk about the uncertain future for the nine Bilingual schools.

In recent weeks, the Labor Government of the Northern Territory of this country made an astonishing announcement that four hours of English was to be mandatory at the beginning of each school day – for all schools, all school children, at all school levels. A school day is five hours and twenty minutes and the Bilingual model cannot survive on an afternoon of an hour and twenty minutes tuition. If implemented, the four hours of mandatory English will effectively kill off Bilingual education.

I find this extraordinary in the light of international evidence and evidence that is available in this country.

While few, if any of us here, need reminding about the importance of Bilingual and Bicultural education – I think the Northern Territory Government of Australia needs reminding that Bilingual schools support and enhance all that we Indigenous people have fought for over time to preserve our independent cultures and identities.

Furthermore, our cultures and our languages are our human rights, protected under international treaties. Our struggles to be heard and to be recognised have resulted in international treaties which offer us protections for our rights.

The Northern Territory Government claims it is being pushed into dismantling Bilingual education because the Federal Government is standardising school curricula across the nation.[4] I have two responses to that. The first is that there is nothing stopping schools from teaching a national curriculum in Indigenous languages. All of the same content and the same outcomes can be achieved in Indigenous languages. In addition, we have to remember that right from the beginning of school, English is part of the Bilingual school day, and therefore students are learning English literacy right from the first year of school.

The second response is this: At paragraph 82 of the Australian Labor Party’s National Platform it reads:

  1. Labor supports bi-lingual and bi-cultural education and believes they have value for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.[5]

The Federal Education Minister has been equivocal on the subject of Bilingual education. She has talked about the importance of English language learning, but she has not said outright that Bilingual education should be sacrificed to four hours of English literacy. I assume that the Federal Government will not act against its own policy Platform – a Platform on which it was elected in 2007. I am hoping that the Federal Government will bring some clarity to this issue, and support its own position on this matter. In fact, I would now like to see the Federal Government take a leadership role and develop a national policy on Bilingual education so that schools across Australia can benefit from this educational approach.

We need to put a stop to ill-informed assaults on Bilingual education. Australian schools should be positioned to extend and enhance Bilingual education, without having to continually justify its existence. It is only 10 years ago that Indigenous people of the Northern Territory were protesting to keep Bilingual education alive when the previous CLP Government was trying to remove it. The time and energy which is wasted fighting for these programs could be better spent developing and supporting them.

Currently, the Northern Territory Government is also justifying its assault on Bilingual education by telling us that Bilingually educated students don’t do as well as other remote Indigenous students in the national school test results. These are my six responses to that assertion:

One:
The test data being used by the Northern Territory Government shows negligible differences between the performance of Bilingual and non-Bilingual schools – and the data is of the poorest quality. It is based on one year of test results with miniscule sample sizes. It is unreliable and therefore unconscionable to destroy Bilingual education on such poor evidence.


Two:
The Northern Territory Government data shows that all remote students – whether they be from Bilingual and non-Bilingual schools - are significantly under the national test average for English literacy. In other words, the English-only approaches are failing to meet English literacy standards. Why is the Northern Territory Government imposing English-only approaches on Bilingual schools when their own data shows that - by their own measure - the English-only approaches are failed methodologies?

Three:
The Northern Territory Education Department does have its own more reliable data - based on more comprehensive tests - which provide longitudinal assessments and more authoritative analyses of the performance of English literacy approaches. I urge the Education Minister to release her Department’s data before she makes any decisions about English literacy approaches.

Four:
Early iterations of the Department’s own data studies show there are better English literacy outcomes in Bilingual schools compared with the English-only comparison schools.

Five:
There are no tests for Indigenous literacies; no measures of what these literacies provide and what they potentially add to each child’s comprehension of his or her world. No government in this country has measured the impact of Indigenous literacies and knowledges on social, educational, health, environmental and economic determinants. Therefore governments don’t know what they are destroying, and

Six:
As a minimum, government policy must be based on reliable evidence – and so far the reliable evidence both nationally and internationally is pointed towards better outcomes in Bilingual education. Too many policy mistakes have been made in the past - policy decisions that have had devastating impacts on our language and culture - and I am certain that this is another one of them.

In my view, the Northern Territory Government is looking for a quick fix to a very large and complex issue. Improving English literacy outcomes in the remotest regions of Indigenous Australia is an important and complex task. And there is a need for improvements to remote education in Australia, but dismantling Bilingual education is not one of them. It’s not logical, it’s not ethical, and it flies in the face of all evidence. It is absolutely reckless for the Northern Territory Government to proceed.

The loss of Bilingual education will be profound. The rich literature in Indigenous languages which comes out of the schools will be lost. The text books, the literature, the local stories, the art work, and the cultural knowledge which can only be taught through Indigenous languages will be lost. Generations of students who are literate in their own languages will be lost in future. While none of this loss is measured in any test, we all know that the value of Indigenous literacies is inestimable.

And the loss is not just to the Indigenous language speakers of these remote communities - but also to the rest of Australia – and possibly to the world. Indigenous languages and cultures are diminishing at a rapid rate. Of the estimated 250 original Indigenous languages in Australia, less than 20 languages are considered not in danger. Dismantling Bilingual education potentially endangers many of these remaining 20 languages. [6]

This problem of language loss is world-wide. UNESCO estimates that 3,000 of the world’s 6,000 languages are losing speakers and are endangered, and at least 800 are very close to extinction. It is possible that 90 per cent of the world’s languages may be lost by the end of the twenty-first century.

From a human viewpoint and a cultural heritage viewpoint, this is unacceptable. We do not want Australia to be contributing to this situation.

In launching the International Year of Languages, the Director-General of UNESCO said:

Languages are indeed essential to the identity of groups and individuals and to their peaceful coexistence. They constitute a strategic factor of progress towards sustainable development and a harmonious relationship between the global and the local context....

UNESCO therefore invites governments, United Nations organizations, civil society organizations, educational institutions, professional associations and all other stakeholders to increase their own activities to foster respect for, and the promotion and protection of all languages, particularly endangered languages, in all individual and collective contexts.[7]

In endangering languages we endanger cultural knowledge. There is evidence to support the part that Indigenous cultural knowledge plays in assisting us to live healthy lives in harmony with our traditional and spiritual beliefs. A ten year study of people in central Australia demonstrated health outcomes from the traditional lifestyles of people living in the desert. In fact, the study concluded that ‘connectedness to culture, family and land, and opportunities for self-determination’ assist in significantly lower morbidity and mortality rates.[8]

Indigenous cultural knowledge can assist in understanding the patterns of climate change and ways to address its impacts. For example, the Torres Strait Islands people of Australia have an intimate knowledge of the flora, fauna, and seasonal shifts of their land and seas. At a 2006 workshop on climate change, they explained that they’d noticed changes in animal and plant behaviour and observed different patterns in seasonal temperatures. This is cultural knowledge that has been passed down over millennia. Such knowledge is essential if endangered species of plants and animals are to be preserved. This knowledge potentially buys us time to address these looming environmental impacts.[9]

In the Top End of Australia, traditional knowledge is used in fire abatement processes. Skilled Indigenous fire managers are working with the broader community to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, protect culture and the biodiversity of large areas in Arnhem Land and elsewhere.[10] Fire abatement is increasingly important as the globe heats and dry season fires burn longer and hotter.[11] Again this is traditional knowledge; Indigenous cultural knowledge that is playing an essential role in preserving the biodiversity of Australia’s fragile eco-systems.

So this tells me that we need to be asking ourselves about why we educate. Are we are certain that education is about creating a mono-cultural, mono-lingual world with homogenous knowledge systems and values? Are we certain that Western knowledge is always superior to Indigenous knowledge? While we must give Indigenous students access to the Western world, to higher education and Western employment, it should not be at the expense of traditional knowledges - we must not lock Indigenous students out of traditional learning. Our knowledge systems also lead to employment. And these knowledges are essential if we are to care for our ancestral lands.

Sometimes I think we miss a fundamental question – education for what?

We need to know what education is being designed for and what it aims to achieve before deciding how it should be configured and how it should be resourced. These are essential questions that should form the basis of education priorities which – in my view - should be based on local resource plans. While some aspects of education are non-negotiable, such as English literacy and numeracy, there is a need for more flexibility in how we shape education, especially if we want to see success for Indigenous students.

If education stakeholders begin by describing what success looks like for local school graduates, they are in a position to design appropriate curricula. Some remote Indigenous schools are doing this kind of thing.

Let me give you an example. Maningrida School is located in a community on one of the most northern coastlines of Australia. The school is a Bilingual school, offering two Indigenous language streams. As well as having rich language and literacy approaches, the school also has a curriculum which provides opportunities for Indigenous students who want to go onto formal education, as well as opportunities for those who want employment in their home community. Two standout programs are the Contemporary Sciences course and the local Rangers program.

The Contemporary Sciences course is a science program based on care for country. The program had its beginnings in 2005 when local teachers and students took to the outdoors because they did not have a science laboratory. They hoped to be able to identify spiders and other insects in the bush environment. Since the program began in 2005, the students at the Maningrida School have identified 45 new insect species. This program is an excellent example of curricula which engages students by providing an intersection between indigenous and non-indigenous systems of knowledge and culture. The students use their powers of observation and local knowledge of flora and fauna to support their technical learning in the classroom.

The school also has a Rangers Program which operates under the auspice of the local Aboriginal Council; the entity with responsibility to manage both the land and seas in the Maningrida area. The Junior Rangers program is integrated into the curriculum of the school, offering a pathway to employment in a growth industry in the region.

Since the introduction of the courses there have been improvements in school attendance and academic performance. The benefits of the programs are also being felt beyond the school gates with a number of students accessing local employment and some going on to university education. Since the secondary program commenced in 2003, the school has ranked highly amongst Northern Territory schools. The number of students completing the Northern Territory Certificate of Education has been increasing every year since 2004. Much of this success is due to the fact that the local curriculum is relevant and interesting, it builds on local knowledges and it reflects local requirements and opportunities in the region.

I’d like to move to the second part of my presentation now – by providing my observations about the preconditions and principles that should guide education that is delivered to Indigenous students. This year in my Social Justice Report 2008 I devote a Chapter to Indigenous education. The purpose of this chapter is to outline processes that will guide governments, parents and education providers in their efforts to create a coherent educational environment for remote Indigenous young people. I’d like to foreshadow some of the findings here this evening.

My Report looks to some of the mother tongue, Bilingual literacy projects that are guiding practice in the Pacific region. Nine Asia-Pacific countries are developing and supporting these approaches to assist ethno-linguistic minority groups who are generally recognised as being disadvantaged by national educational systems. The nine countries are participating in a UNESCO project in an effort to maintain the linguistic and cultural diversity of this region, and in recognition that one’s mother tongue plays a crucial role in literacy acquisition.

UNESCO recognises the moral and human rights dimension of linguistic and cultural diversity. The issue is made stark when put in the context of what is at stake - that although there are more than 2,000 languages spoken in Asia, only 45 of them make up official languages and are the official languages of school education.[12]

My 2008 report also looks at the preconditions that support education within each school community. This can be complex because as we know, each school and each community is unique with its own strengths and challenges. A one-size-fits-all education approach will not achieve the same results in different environments.

We have a problem with accommodating diversity when education departments are monolithic bureaucracies. Education departments do not operate in a way which provides a school-by-school approach to resource allocation. Departments are not usually in a position to provide site analyses of schools and communities and to tailor approaches to meet specific school and community needs. While there may be some provision for local requirements, government education departments the world over, are usually reliant on formulas that drive staffing allocations and school resource allocations.

We must be able to tailor education to meet the needs of students at the school level. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to Indigenous education, there are some fundamentals that are required for a sound educational environment for our students. And they are not so different for non-Indigenous students. In my view they are:

Along with healthy children, these preconditions go a long way to providing for a good learning environment. Developing processes to achieve these ends is the way forward.

To a large extent, School and community educational partnerships are a ‘given’ in non-Indigenous urban settings. Parents and communities make relatively well informed assumptions that schools reflect their values and aspirations. In fact non-Indigenous parents often select a school based on their value systems, religions or philosophies. For the most part, education in urban environments is tailored to the kinds of outcomes that parents know and expect. For example, urban parents know that school is partly a preparation and a pathway to tertiary education or employment. For this reason, urban parents make a relatively well informed assumption that the school operates in partnership with them, reflecting their expectations and their values.

Implicit or explicit partnerships between schools and Indigenous communities or Indigenous parents are rare. In fact, more often than not, the non-Indigenous school staff and community members are likely to have different cultural values, aspirations and life experiences than those of the Indigenous students and their families.

It is these very differences that make school and community partnerships a necessity for successful schooling for Indigenous students. Evidence tells us that education is most likely to be successful when there are congruent messages being delivered by parents and by the school. A disjunction between these two important influences in the lives of children, only creates confusion and mixed messages for learners.

Students, parents and education providers must have a collective understanding about the purpose of school - what it provides, and what all parties can reasonably expect – in order for education to work to its fullest potential. The aspirations of Indigenous parents and their children must be communicated to school teachers and leaders so that there is common understanding about the focus of the school program. School staff need to explain curriculum requirements, including any constraints on the ways in which they provide an educational service. Pre school and post school options should be part of these discussions because they provide the bigger picture for education over the life cycle. Post school options are an especially critical part of any discussion between Indigenous students, their parents and school staff because they also shape some of the purpose of schooling.

Local negotiations and agreements are the only way to develop education with Indigenous students and their families to ensure there is consistency of understanding and expectation. I am sure there are many examples of these collaborations being discussed in your concurrent workshops at this conference.

And collaboration or partnership approaches are what a human rights approach seeks to achieve. A human rights approach has the following features:

and

We are a long way from this situation.

More specifically, in terms of the current Bilingual situation, the Australian government could be argued to be in breach of its international obligations to human rights treaties. Australia is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Under this Convention, the Australian Government agrees to the following:

Article 29.1 ... Education of the child shall be directed to:
(c) the development of respect for the child’s parents, his or her own cultural identity, language and values, for the national values of the country in which the child is living, the country from which he or she may originate and for civilizations different from his or her own ...

The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, has this to say about our right to education:

Article 14.1... Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning.

Imagine if we were in a position where we didn’t have to put out the spot fires or the bushfires created by poor policy. Imagine if we didn’t have to waste resources fighting for our basic rights, like being able to instruct our children in our own languages. Imagine if we didn’t have to spend time and energy attempting to reverse many of the damaging policies that have affected our people all over the world. Imagine what we could achieve?

And I think it is no coincidence that we are a long way from the level of success and sustainability that we ought to be achieving in Indigenous education in Australia.

Our children deserve the best quality educational resources – and qualified, competent and culturally trained teaching staff are the fundamental educational resource. This year at a UNESCO meeting in Indonesia, the following statement was made as part of the Bali Declaration:

We recognize that no education system can rise above the quality of its teachers, as they are key to improving the quality of education as well as to expanding access and equity.[13]

In 2007, an international study of student performance from 57 countries found that the quality of school teachers is the most important factor impacting on student learning outcomes. The report based its findings on data from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment. It found that the world’s best performing school systems have three attributes.

They are:

  1. Getting the right people to become teachers.
  2. Developing them into effective instructors, and
  3. Ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child.[14]

We must ensure the best teachers are providing education to Indigenous students. Perhaps there is a message in this for the Northern Territory government – good teachers make a difference. Good teachers who have had cultural training are even more able to make a difference. In NSW there is soon to be a program to provide teachers with ten hours of cultural competency training. I am a strong advocate of programs such as these.

Educators need to be able to reflect on their personal cultural knowledges and biases and consider the ways in which they inform professional practice. I’d like to see programs like this one funded across the country and taught by Indigenous people.

Teachers are leaders, mentors and educationalists. They have enormous influence over young lives through both their actions and words.

And there is a message in this for us too. There is much that we Indigenous people can do to mentor and support the next generation of Indigenous educators. Our children and their children should be able to see Indigenous people in the classroom, in positions of leadership in schools and in universities and other tertiary training institutions. We must be the people who support and inspire the next generation as many of our Indigenous teachers and academics continually do.

I hope you are being inspired by this conference and the information you are hearing is enriching and enhancing your practice. There is so much expertise at this conference, and so much we can achieve together. Let’s build our expertise, share our successes and challenges, and build a strong and bright future for the next generation of Indigenous young people. They deserve no less.

Finally, please remember two things;

The Indigenous cultures of Australia are the oldest living cultures in the world - they go back at least 50,000 years.

and

From self respect comes dignity

and

From dignity comes hope

Thank you.

[1] Australian Bureau of Statistics, 4221.0 – Schools, Australia, 2007, available online at:
[2] Rolstadt K., Mahoney K., Glass G. V., The Big Picture: A Meta-Analysis of Program effectiveness Research on English Language Learners, Educational Policy, 19 (4), 2005, pp 572-594, abstract available online at: http://www.lmri.ucsb.edu/publications/06_gold.pdf accessed 1 December 2008
[3] Rolstadt K., Mahoney K., Glass G. V., The Big Picture: A Meta-Analysis of Program effectiveness Research on English Language Learners, Educational Policy, 19 (4), 2005, pp 572-594, abstract available online at: http://www.lmri.ucsb.edu/publications/06_gold.pdf accessed 1 December 2008
[4] Ben Langford, Feds 'force' NT to cut local languages, Northern Territory News, November 17th, 2008, available online at: http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2008/11/17/16361_ntnews.html accessed 1 December 2008
[5] Australian Labor Party, ALP National Platform and Constitution, Chapter Thirteen - Respecting Human Rights and a Fair Go for All, paragraph 82, available online at: http://www.alp.org.au/platform/chapter_13.php accessed 1 December 2008
[6] National Indigenous Languages Survey (NILS), 2005, p. 10
[7] Mr. Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, United Nations Website, available online at: http://www.un.org/events/iyl/index.shtml
[8] Rowley K. G., et al., Lower than expected morbidity and mortality for an Australian Aboriginal population: 10-year follow-up in a decentralised community, The Medical Journal of Australia, available online at: http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/188_05_030308/row10886_fm.html accessed 2 December 2008
[9] Green D., Garnaut Climate Change Review, Climate impacts on the health of remote northern Australian Indigenous Communities, 2008, p 14
[10] Savanna Explorer, North Australia Information Resource, West Arnhem Land Fire Project
West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement available online at: http://www.savanna.org.au/al/fire_abatement.html accessed 2 December 2008
[11] Green D., Garnaut Climate Change Review, Climate impacts on the health of remote northern Australian Indigenous Communities, 2008, p 8

[12] UNESCO, Promoting Literacy in Multilingual Settings, 2007, p.2
[13] United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, Bali Declaration, Seventh E-9 Ministerial Review Meeting, 10-12 March 2008, Bali, Indonesia, available online at:
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001584/158455E.pdf accessed 14 October 2008
[14] Western Australia Education Taskforce Report, Public Access - Twomey Report, Chapter 4, Leadership and Mentoring, June 2008, available online at: http://sstuwa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=754&Itemid=566 accessed 19 November 2008