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‘Partnership builds success’ An Indigenous perspective of educational partnerships


Tom Calma
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner
Australian Human Rights Commission

to the Dare to Lead National Conference,
Hyatt Hotel, Adelaide

14 June 2009

I would like to acknowledge the Kaurna People, the traditional owners and custodians of the Adelaide Plains and pay my respects to their elders past and present. Thank you Uncle Lewis O’Brien for your warm and generous welcome.

Can I begin by recognising Dr Alice Rigney and Dr Paul Hughes two of my heroes in Indigenous education, Professor Peter Buckskin the Co-Patron of Dare to Lead and all of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers and administrators here today.

I thank Dare to Lead for inviting me to speak today, and I would like to acknowledge all of you here. You are educators of current and future generations of young people. I have great respect for the work you do and the important role you play in our society.

The subject of this conference and the topic I am discussing today is educational partnerships. Now let me say firstly, I know that some of us here may be a little disillusioned when we hear talk about partnerships. And it is not because we think partnerships are a bad thing in principle; rather, it is because many of us have been talking about ‘partnerships’ for years – and the response from governments has been high on rhetoric and low on action.

Yes, many of us here also know that partnership approaches to education have been the catch-cry of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people since the 1970s. And it is true to say that in remote Australia at least, during the 1970s and 80s we were in a better position than we are today, with more emphasis on our involvement in schools. It is also true to say that the formal structures to engage and involve us in education have been reducing over time. There is less funding for partnerships, and more rigid control over school curricula.

So do we think that ‘partnerships’ is the government’s latest weasel word? We certainly read about partnerships in every education policy about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education and yet we don’t see evidence of the systems and structures to engage us and to support our input. We also know that governments have acted against our efforts to have input into schooling. The policy to undermine Bilingual Education in the Northern Territory is a good example of this.

So we may have reservations about partnerships – even some cynicism. But, even with these reservations, it is my view that we should seize every opportunity to make real partnerships happen. I commend Dare to Lead in focussing the next phase of its work on partnerships. This may be the time when governments and others are ready to bring us into education as true partners. We should hold them to the promises of their policies.

My job, as I see it today, is to reignite the power around partnerships. Partnerships are hugely important and will always be important – and I am talking here about partnerships between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the systems that educate our children.

So let’s start with: Why should we have partnerships?

Well, first and foremost we need partnerships so we can have our voices heard in schools. My reference to “we and our” in this context is to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; my people. And we need to have our voices heard in schools because governments and non-Indigenous people design everything about the educational environments where our children are schooled. They design the infrastructure, they develop the curricula, they set the times for school holidays and they design the measures against which our kids are assessed. We need to make sure that schools are places where our kids feel welcome and where our culture and knowledge is reflected. Our voices must inform some of these education variables.

The second reason for partnerships is equally important.

It is now well established through research that when students get congruent messages from home and school – that is, when parents and schools are saying the same things and reinforcing similar values, students are more likely to take on the messages of the learning.[1] Therefore we need partnerships because it assists our kids to learn.

Students see the relevance of learning when they can make connections between what they hear in the classroom and what they hear and see in their home. Children learn through scaffolding knowledge – through creating building blocks of meaning. It is difficult when the messages are mixed or contradictory. When the school says one thing and parents say another, students are likely to tune out. So we need to make sure we know what is being taught in schools and we need to have or own input – as parents, as educators, as community members and as experts or professors of Indigenous knowledges.

We also need partnerships so that parents and students can make good decisions about their education. In rural and remote locations, these partnerships are crucial. There are many decisions about schooling for parents to consider. Do parents want their children in boarding schools for senior secondary education or do they want quality secondary schooling in their region? Do parents want the local language and culture taught at the school? Does the community want the school to provide Bilingual education? What is the best educational approach to suit local needs? What kind of employment is available in the region? Where can students go if they want to continue studying after school?

Some of these questions are equally urgent for parents in urban areas. What kind of employment will my child be able to take up after school? Are the subjects that my child is choosing the best ones for the future? What are my child’s talents and what are his or her challenges in the school environment? How does the school curriculum reflect the aspirations of my child? What other study options are available at the school?

A regular meeting of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stakeholders and school staff would provide a conduit for this information. More importantly, a partnership would allow for parental input into decisions.

Establishing the need for partnerships is something that is relatively easy to come to in principle. We know it is a good idea, but it is considerably more difficult to develop the structures which make partnerships functional and self sustaining.

Most of us here know that it is the education bureaucracies that set the broad direction for school education. At a distance from schools, the departments make many of the decisions about what schools provide. And we all know that they simply can’t do it well or in a way that is responsive to local needs and aspirations.

So, what does a partnership group or a local forum look like? How does it operate?

Here’s one model.

The Northern Territory is some way down the track in developing Community Partnership Education Boards.[2] I want to present these Boards as a model for partnerships though I acknowledge that the process for implementing these Boards has stalled in the NT.

In principle however, the Community Partnership Education Boards are a powerful model of Indigenous involvement in schools. In 2008, the then Deputy Chief Minister of the Northern Territory said the following about the Education Boards:

These structures must allow communities to assume more responsibility and accountability for the delivery of quality education and training services by empowering them to coordinate the effective use of resources and expertise. The new approaches to partnerships must allow groups of Indigenous communities to form regional governance structures that can act as consumer representative fund holders with responsibility for purchasing education and training services for their communities.[3]

In August 2005 the Hon Syd Stirling who was then the NT Minister for Education said this about the Community Partnership Education Boards:

...to overcome the disconnection between the aspirations of the community and the direction of schooling and training... My vision is for a genuine partnership between Indigenous parents, students and those responsible for the education of young Indigenous Territorians with a view to a better life outcomes for Indigenous people...

In 2007 the first Remote Learning Partnership Agreement was signed at the Garma festival in Arnhem Land. The Agreement between the Yampirrpa School Council and the NT Government describes a plan for working together to achieve mutual education goals. The Agreement sets out the nature and scope of the cooperation of partners – the Yolngu people and the education department. The Agreement documents the jointly agreed goals and lists the commitments and actions of parties to achieve the goals. In principle, there is much to recommend the model which was two years in its development.

This was to be the beginning of the first Community Partnership Education Board. I am aware however, that the NT Government has reneged on its part of this partnership agreement by attempting to do away with Bilingual education. The status of negotiation and progress around this initiative is now in limbo.

Even with this disappointment, I think this only shows that agreements of this kind may need safeguards to make sure that they cannot be ignored or overruled. It also goes back to my opening statement in this speech about some of us being disillusioned about partnerships. There is much rhetoric and little real action to honour partnerships.

We Aboriginal people have been getting used to some of these setbacks, but it won’t stop our determinations. The principle of Community Partnership Education Boards should be something that we continue to aspire to in the environments where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people are the majority. I am aware also, that this kind of structure won’t work in every environment, and may not be needed in some places. There are other models of partnerships, and not all involve partnerships with governments.

In the case of the Graham (Polly) Farmer Foundation, a partnership was set up between Indigenous community members and this philanthropic group. Since 1997, the Foundation’s aim has been to establish and manage after-school education support projects for Indigenous students who want to complete their secondary education.[4] The Foundation now coordinates a number of projects, each tailored to suit a remote Indigenous community.

The Polly Farmer Foundation is a central point receiving funds from private donors, governments, community interests and other stakeholders. The Foundation has developed a model for managing the projects using the advice of a steering committee of project partners who have responsibility to set the strategic direction.

Local Indigenous people are the essential drivers of each project, and it goes without saying that they are part of the steering committee.

This example raises an interesting point. Partnerships do not happen without resources. Some communities are lucky enough to have the support and services of organisations like the Polly Farmer Foundation, but not all.

It is my view that governments should fund schools to develop a secretariat that will support Indigenous community members and schools to develop partnership forums where the need for these groups can be established. And an Indigenous school secretariat would consist of support staff whose role it is to communicate and record all of the recommendations of partnership agreements. The secretariat would manage all aspects of the partnerships, including bringing in services such as translator and interpreter services where required.

You will be aware though, that at the moment it is not easy to get funding for this purpose. We used to have ASSPA, the Aboriginal Student Support and Parent Awareness program, until 2004. The ASSPA funding was allocated to school committees based on a per capita formula taking into account the number of Indigenous students enrolled at the school and weighted for remoteness. To my mind, this was a fair process.

Now we have the Parent School Partnership Initiative (PSPI) program. This operates on a submission process which puts the onus on the school to apply for funds. The PSPI is part of the Government’s Whole of School Intervention Strategy that aims to involve communities and parents in schools. But I am concerned that the submission process puts small schools at a disadvantage and there is some evidence that small schools might have difficulty accessing these funds. In 2006 the government was unable to spend all of the money that was allocated for this program.[5] I suspect that the small remote schools, to which 50 percent of the funds are allocated, were unable to make the appropriate submissions to get the funding.[6]

I would like to see this program improved. If governments want partnerships to be more than aspirational statements, then they have to target funds and make sure that they get to the schools where they are required.

I am talking about formal partnerships that are sustainable and ongoing. They may be groups with an elected or stable membership that opens its door to the community.

Some of you here have a role to liaise between the school and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents and carers. I am well aware that it is not always easy to engage parents and community members in school life – especially once students are at secondary school. Parents don’t show up at information nights, and if they do, there is not a lot of real interaction between the school staff and parents.

I should also clarify that the partnerships that I am talking about are more than information sessions led by staff – they are places where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have a role in shaping the school environment. They are forums where some of our knowledge and world-view is incorporated into the school. They are forums where we are the advisors running the information sessions and the school staff; listen to us.

Of course we also need to know about the school curriculum. We should be in conversations about the purpose of school and the future of the children in the region. We should be discussing further study options, training and employment.

We need assistance to develop these partnership groups. They can be configured in many different ways, but with the one pre-condition – that they are configured to meet the local needs and to utilise the local resources.

Now I want to go back to my opening statement about reigniting some interest and action around partnerships. In this part of the speech I will be talking about the work or the roles for education partnership groups.

I think that the first thing that local school partners should do – is to define what educational success looks like for local students. While not an exact paraphrase, the school partners need to consider the following question – education for what?

Too often we start to talk about education without looking at what we want from it.

These are the questions that school partners should be asking and seeking to answer. Once they have some ideas for how schools can meet local needs – it is up to the staff of the school to make these things happen.

Let me give you an example. Maningrida is a remote coastal community in Arnhem Land and home to approximately 2,600 people; the majority of whom are Indigenous. There are 10 Indigenous languages spoken in the region and most residents are able to speak three or four dialects. There is some employment in the region, and by forming partnerships with local industry, the school is taking action to prepare its students to take up these opportunities.

The school has developed two standout programs with the assistance of local employers and utilising local resources.

The first program is based on science, culture and caring for country. The program had its beginnings in 2005 when the Maningrida 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 utilising local resources and building on the skills of the students.

The course is particularly successful because it provides an intersection between Indigenous and non-Indigenous systems of knowledge and culture. The students use their local knowledge of flora and fauna to support their technical scientific learning in the classroom.

The second course is the Junior Rangers program that is integrated into the Year 11 curriculum. It offers a pathway to employment in a growth industry in the Arnhem region. The course has links with the Djelk Rangers Program which includes a Men’s and Women’s Program as well as the Junior Ranger Program. The Djelk Rangers Program operates under the auspice of the Bawinanga Aboriginal Council; the entity with responsibility to manage both the land and sea country over the Maningrida area.

Since the introduction of the science and ranger 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. Programs similar to the Djelk Rangers Program can be developed with the mining, retail and banking sectors across Australia.

Much of Djelk’s success is attributed to the fact that the local curriculum is relevant and interesting and it reflects local requirements and opportunities in the region. Its success can also be attributed to the fact that local Indigenous industry is a partner in the education process.

This example from Maningrida reminds us that education does not exist in isolation. Education is many things. It is a pathway from early childhood to employment incorporating many facets of local life such as culture, health, safety and nutrition. Each community must be in a position to configure its own structure which will bring together as many partners as is necessary, including levels of government, local industry and employers and philanthropic groups. We must remember that we create strength by bringing others with us.

We all know that education is much more than learning in a school classroom. Learning begins from the moment a child enters the world and continues throughout his or her lifetime. Education occurs in the home, in the workplace, in all social settings and during leisure time. A community and a culture that supports learning and develops its own learning is a community that is primed for educational success. A good education environment does not cordon off separate areas of learning; rather it sees the different learning environments as part of an organic whole; a lifelong education journey.

I have another example of partnership action which has led to learning outside of the formal schooling environment.

In the Kimberley region of Western Australia, elders and community members have developed projects to connect young people to country. The Yiriman Youth Project is a development and coordination point for cultural education and training projects for young people in the region.

The Yiriman Youth Project’s main focus is building confidence through culture, working alongside young men and women aged between 14 – 30 years.

The project was initiated by Aboriginal elders who were concerned that some of their young people had no jobs and no future. Elders from the four language groups developed ideas over many years about ways they could stop substance misuse, self-harm and suicide in their communities.

Their ideas provided the foundation for the Yiriman Youth Project which promotes life skills and sustainable livelihoods through youth leadership, land management and community development. All Yiriman projects have a cultural focus aimed at developing opportunities for young Aboriginal people. The various Yiriman activities have been successful in getting youth out of urban areas and away from substance abuse and back onto traditional country.

Yiriman works in partnership with Indigenous organisations in the Kimberley area. The partner organisations are many and varied. The Land and Sea Unit of the Kimberley Land Council provides opportunities for young people to participate in land and sea management. Mangkaja Arts and Derby Aboriginal Health Service provide community driven bush medicine trips. The Departments of Justice and Community Development offer diversionary programs which include camel walks and cultural youth exchanges with the Shire of Derby West Kimberley.

Other partner organisations involved in cultural land management, performing arts and cultural workshops include the Kimberley Language Resource Centre, NAILSMA, the Kimberley Regional Fire Management Project, the Natural Heritage Fund, the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service, Macquarie and Murdoch Universities.

There are many important reasons for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to pass on cultural knowledge from generation to generation. In the case of the Kimberley clans, cultural knowledge was the reason for successes in Native Title claims to traditional lands. Partnerships in education have consequences beyond the classroom and beyond the individual achievements of the students who benefit.

We need to work together as partners because we need to maximise the best resources. Education partnerships have vast potential to provide benefits for our kids and our communities.

So let me conclude with some of the key features which can lead to successful educational partnerships.


I am pleased that the next phase of work for Dare to Lead is partnerships.

The phrase that sums up the theme of this conference – Partnership Builds Success, says it all.

As a postscript can I encourage those who do not have a close engagement with your Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents or guardians, who do not have a Reconciliation Action Plan or who have as yet not planned a NAIDOC event, to take this first step in partnership development.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents, guardians and children have to feel part of the system, if we are to benefit from the system.

Remember, from self respect comes dignity, and from dignity comes hope. And if we can engender hope, we build resilience, and resilience is essential for our kids to thrive. Thank you


[1] S Christenson & C Peterson, Parenting for School Success, Review Research, Department of Educational Psychology, College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota (2006). At: http://www.extension.umn.edu/family/00079.html (viewed 5 January 2008).
[2] Minister Scrymgour, Northern Territory Minister for Education and Training, ‘Transforming Indigenous Education’, (media release, 30 April 2008). At http://newsroom.nt.gov.au/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewRelease&id=3989&d=5 (viewed 7 October 2008).
[3] Northern Territory Department of Employment, Education and Training, Research Priorities 2008 – 2012, p 9. At http://www.det.nt.gov.au/corporate/research/docs/research_priorities.pdf (viewed 7 October 2008).
[4] Graham ‘Polly’ Farmer rose to become one of Australian Rules Football’s greatest players. His early life was at Sister Kate’s Home – an orphanage for children of Aboriginal descent. He went on to play 392 league games from 1952 to 1971 and win two Sandover Medals. He was 10 times his club’s fairest and best player. He was the first footballer to be named as a Member of the British Empire (MBE).

[5] Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, National Report to Parliament on Indigenous Education and Training, 2006, (2008) p 151. At http://10.1.1.248:8080/ProgressMessages/NationalReporttoParliamentonIndigenousPublications.rtf?proxy=10.1.1.248&action=complete&index=16&id=105287796&filename=NationalReporttoParliamentonIndigenousPublications.rtf (viewed 28 January 2009).
[6] Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, National Report to Parliament on Indigenous Education and Training, 2006, (2008) p. 127. At http://10.1.1.248:8080/ProgressMessages/NationalReporttoParliamentonIndigenousPublications.rtf?proxy=10.1.1.248&action=complete&index=16&id=105287796&filename=NationalReporttoParliamentonIndigenousPublications.rtf (viewed 28 January 2009).