F. Success stories
The inquiry was cautioned against evaluating the success of policies and programs by relying on individual success stories.
[T]here are lots of good one-off stories, there are lots of good things happening. You show me a good teacher, and I'll show you good things happening. So there are a number of projects. But I think we need to be very, very careful of any process which assessed the success of, say, policy looking at project by project . It's very easy to put your hand up and say, "There's 20 really good projects". The reality, in the outcome of project-based assessment, is those figures which I showed you. In reality it makes very little difference to the norm across the state, and we need to be very, very careful because I think it is a very cunning way for government to be seen to be doing things which are very superficial and rely on the goodwill of staff, which can be whittled away very quickly project by project, until you get a transformation. It produces a very good image about projects. There are good projects, there are very dedicated teachers in our community. Unfortunately, they're too few in number (Professor John Lester, NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group, Sydney hearing, 22 October 1999).
The purpose of this section is to report successful strategies which may inform future planning - to being to identify 'what works'.
The importance of pre-school was raised together with the importance of significant community involvement in planning and delivery.
At Toomelah there's a big difference because of the pre-school. They know their numbers, how to count, their colours, everything. It's definitely needed. It'll bring literacy and numeracy levels up (Boggabilla NSW ASSPA Committee meeting, 5 March 1999).
Noting substantially improved Indigenous participation in pre-schooling in WA, the Education Department representative stated
... it no doubt has something to do with the extra provision that has been provided over the last few years, but I think it also may be related to the fact that we do have some Aboriginal preschools in both metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas where those preschools are predominantly for Aboriginal students, although non-Aboriginal students can go there. They are run in very close association with the community and in some cases are run by the community where there is a strong emphasis on the Aboriginal culture and environment, and those preschools sort of being a strategy for transition into mainstream schooling (Jayne Johnston, EDWA, Perth hearing, 24 May 1999).
Alternative education models are indicated for Indigenous students alienated from mainstream schooling and by a system which fails to value their culture and recognise their independence.
Currently, the VET sector and its principal component, TAFE, enrols more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people than any other post compulsory education provider. The numbers participating are increasing significantly year by year:"The patterns of VET participation show a substantial increase in the involvement of Indigenous people in TAFE courses and other VET programs.. This increase has occurred across all age groups.
Indigenous VET participation rates are comparable with non-Indigenous VET participation rates in the 21 to 24 age group and are actually much higher for Indigenous people than for other Australians in the 16 to 17-year-old and 25 years and over cohorts. It is only amongst 18 to 20 year olds that the non-Indigenous VET participation rate greatly exceeds the VET Indigenous participation rate."43
Undertaking VET training clearly improves employment outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people - 80 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with VET qualifications are in the labour force whereas amongst those without a qualification, only 49 per cent are participating in the labour force. However, there is a disparity between the employment outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people completing VET compared to non-Indigenous people - in 1996 52 per cent of Indigenous VET graduates were in employment the year following their graduation compared to 71 per cent of non-Indigenous graduates. However, this situation should not downgrade the importance of VET (ATSIC submission, page 17).
In Mt Isa we secured grants last year to assist communities across Queensland look at alternative methodologies for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students who choose not to access schooling. One of our success cases is in Mt Isa, the Kalkadoon Education Alternative program, the KEA program. The alternative program operates in collaboration with other primary and secondary schools in the Mt Isa area. The program aims to provide a highly supportive and culturally appropriate educational environment for Indigenous students with learning, social and behaviour problems. In 1999 the project has received $90,000 to support the ongoing employment of staff and programs, focusing on literacy, numeracy, vocational education and training, live schools and school to work transition (Shane Williams, Education Queensland, Brisbane hearing, 8 October 1999).
Technology is a great learning strategy for the children here because it combines visual learning and repetition. I think that is one of the reasons why the children have taken off this year (Billiluna WA school meeting, 14 May 1999).
Teaching literacy and numeracy in a context of vocational training was described.
Another one of these special initiatives is the Cooktown Step Ahead project. Step Ahead is a joint initiative between Education Queensland and DETYA, receiving funding in 1999 of approximately $50,000. The project, which is progressing towards sustainability is a community-based vocational educational and training program operating between the Cooktown State School, local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community and local industry. The program targets students identified as at risk, enabling them to undertake specialised literacy and numeracy development and aid QF level 1 training and local industry whilst remaining at the school (Shane Williams, Education Queensland, Brisbane hearing, 8 October 1999).
There was strong support for learning in an Indigenous environment whether it be simply all-Aboriginal classes with an Aboriginal teacher or adoption of a complete Indigenous pedagogy.
They've got a project running in Perth where they've got a high Aboriginal population in an area and they're got three pre-primary classes one of which has been turned into an Aboriginal pre-primary class with an Aboriginal teacher and they haven't got long term records but talking to the principal he was saying that the kids who had been through that pre-primary showed no substantial difference in grades later on and attendance ratings throughout their school careers, whereas the ones who were bypassing that pre-primary were uncomfortable with school and were disadvantaged right through the system (Helen Wright, Kununurra hearing, 17 May 1999).It's a philosophy, I guess, that underpins our practice, that attempts to allow the students to work for some of their time within their own cultural paradigms, their own language, their own frameworks, and we do that by encouraging the students to think from their position, encouraging the students to break into language groups, perhaps, and discuss something they're learning, as a group, in their own language and then come back to the bigger group (Veronica Arbon, Batchelor College, Darwin hearing, 10 May 1999).
The flow-on benefits for all learning of studying an Indigenous language were endorsed.
What I saw happened [following the introduction of bilingual education at Nguiu] was the self-esteem and the ownership not only of their language but the beginning of the ownership of their school, the difference in the children - suddenly they had a language that they could speak in and they could write in, and, to me, these are the educational values that we should be looking at at this time ... (Sister Anne Gardiner, Darwin hearing, 10 May 1999).This part of the curriculum is one of the most relevant parts of the curriculum. This is real education. Where is the equity in it? The parents are saying that this is the subject that the children are talking about at home. They talk about what they have learnt about Yolngu, not about maths or science (Nhulunbuy NT community meeting, 12 May 1999).
... we get our elders involved in teaching our children, our children learn Walpiri, learn about our culture and it makes them proud of themselves, of who they are. It is really important that bilingual education is not stopped. It shouldn't be stopped (Lajamanu NT community meeting, 13 May 1999).
The kids feel so proud to learn their own language (Halls Creek WA community meeting, 18 May 1999).
Along came these elders and told stories, ancient stories, of their own lives and experience, which talked about knowledge production in a way which is completely different from the normal transmission metaphor that we use in the west. Most schooling is built on a notion that information is in the head of the teacher and passes through the mouth and along an imaginary pipe and into the brain of the person that's learning, and has the same shape in the student as what it has in the teacher. From a Yolngu point of view, that's impossible and it's undesirable because it's assimilation, especially if you've got a white teacher. The Yolngu have always had a model for the production of knowledge, which is negotiated, which is talked about using a ceremonial metaphor. I think if you go to Yirrkala you'll hear more about this, it's not my position to talk about it too much. It's to do with how knowledge comes out of a relation between language and the land, and it's only formulated through respect for people's positions from which they speak from, and through some sort of negotiated celebration of the moment. In other words, truth, for example, is not something which is universal and transplace but it's something which is momentary, which is negotiated and celebrated together, relevant to a particular moment and to a particular place. So that's one example of the way in which we, as white fellas, have a lot to learn about how we ought to organise our education through different epistemologies (Michael Christie, NT University, Darwin hearing, 10 May 1999).
Endnote
43 Chris Robinson and Lionel Bamblett, Making A Difference: The Impact of Australia's Indigenous Education and Training Policy, National Centre for Vocational Education Research (1998).
Last updated 2 December 2001.
