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Rural and Remote Education - NT

Rural

and Remote Education - NT

Nhulunbuy community meeting,

12 May 1999 - notes

"We have a number

of different Ethnic communities here in Nhulunbuy. It is a very diverse

community."

"We came here (Nhulunbuy)

from an Asian country and we couldn't believe the difference of the two

countries. In Asia we would mix with the other culture. Here the communities

are very segregated. I would like increased interaction between the two

schools (Nhulunbuy High School and Yirrkala Community Education Centre)."

School resources

"Nhulunbuy High School

offers Years 8 to 12 and has a total of 220 students. Devolution has worked

really well at Nhulunbuy High School. Considering the size of the school

we have managed our resources well so that we can provide the necessary

resources to the school students. We have extra staff so that we can offer

our students a good range of subjects."

"I experience blatantly

(from the NT government) the sense that the bush doesn't matter and that

we do not exist. I have just received news this week that we have had

huge cuts to our Vocational Education Training [VET] funding and there

have been minimal cuts in the urban areas. We did not get our multi-purpose

building that was guaranteed to all schools by 1994. The chairperson of

the school council was told (by the past School Minister) that urban schools

have priority over rural and remote schools."

"Yet our kids have

to have undercover areas to play sport and to do extra-curricula activities.

We don't even have these facilities in the town. We just have a new private

school in town with 23 kids. It is a Christian Community School."

"When students travel

for interschool sports or sporting carnivals, there are no departmental

funds for the accompanying teacher or teacher assistant. Teachers would

end up fundraising in order to help pay for the airfares and accommodation."

"It costs $500 to

send our child to the music camp in Darwin. You can fundraise but it is

actually other parents who have their own expenses who end up helping

to pay for your child. Children in Year 8 have to choose what they want

to do as an extra-curricula activity. It is so expensive for travel that

the children have to be sure about what they want to do (music, sporting

activities, hobbies). They can perhaps do one trip per year to do these

extra-curricula activities."

"Children who excel

in a particular area often have to relocate to an urban area in order

to be amongst the resources. This puts strain on families and on the children.

We don't have people visiting our community, so there is a limit to the

experiences that they can have here."

"The school curriculum

in the NT is very good. It is very broad so that the children do languages

other than English, performing arts and home economics. But because we

are a small school there is a limit to the number of specialist teachers

we can have. We have to ask teachers to double-up. The English teacher

may be teaching performing arts, and the PE teacher running the home economics

class. We need people who can contribute to the school and the community."

"It is not just remoteness

that is an issue. Smallness as a school is an issue. Everyone is looking

after 2 or 3 or 4 things. Every time there is an excursion we have to

consider travel, fundraising, accommodation, administration, letters home,

relief teachers and sometimes that is just the beginning. The demand on

the teacher load is huge and they have to teach their regular maths class

too."

"The Industry Training

Advisory Board set up programs for VET training. The Marine Industry was

seen as a growth area here. So we went out and talked to the maritime

workers to set this up. But teachers in Darwin don't have to do this.

We spend hours and hours and then they cut our funding. We are a small

school doing everything with no community support. Yirrkala is trying

to set up VET there. For the principals at Nhumbawarra and other places,

they don't have the resources to set up VET and become a training provider."

Public schooling

"It is of utmost

importance that public schools continue to be adequately funded by the

government. In remote areas funding for our schools should be maintained,

even increased. More and more our funding is being taken away and more

funding is being provided to private schools. This is not a choice for

remote communities. There is no other school that is a bus ride away.

Funding public schools means keeping families together. I don't want to

have to send my children away so that they can have a full education.

I want my children here with me."

"I don't think that

70% of Australian children should have their education denigrated by the

Australian Prime Minister. Remote school children have to be perceived

as Australian. They are not all suicidal and they are not all unemployed.

They have to be represented in our media and in our literature in positive

ways. These kids don't exist in Australian culture."

The Education Department

restructure

"I find the whole

restructure indecipherable. There are levels of positions but we have

not seen anything that identifies what these positions might be. I had

7 working days to respond to the Curriculum, Assessment and Certification

document. I find this fairly indicative of the Department."

Disability

"We are able to access

funding from the NT Government and we have been very successful. However,

I know that my colleagues, principals in the area have not been nearly

as successful. Having sat on the Ascertainment Committee that allocates

this, I find myself really having to push funding to Aboriginal schools.

Yirrkala has basically no funding. The difference is quite extraordinary."

"The system as I

perceive it is addressing students with gross disabilities. We have a

'Students at Risk' program in the NT which is extremely well managed.

We definitely have students who fall into this category. We have students

diagnosed as ADD, ODD and ADHD and their medication is managed from Darwin,

600 kilometres away. There is no support for the parents or anybody with

these kids. We have asked for one person for the region but we have not

received anything."

"We have two children

with schizophrenia at the school. We have had kids so overdosed on medication

by distraught parents that we have had to put them into intensive care.

We would like an Education Psychologist."

"The primary school

has also looked at behaviour management strategies but the problem is

that you come up against a brick wall because people with the skills are

not available, and even if they were the school may not be able to afford

the ongoing salary."

"In Darwin or a larger

city you have access to all kinds of resources. We have to bring them

into the community. One model that might work here is to prioritise the

groups of needs within the school. You could bring people (specialists)

in and move them around the communities. One week they could be in Groote

Eylandt, another week they could be here and then the person could go

on to other communities."

"The primary school

has 600 students and so this is a considerable number of young people.

There are a high number of children in the primary school who have high

level needs. There are school nurses and therapists. They have moved to

Health and I think these positions need to be tagged to the school."

Health

"The health issue

is paramount. You are not going to have kids learning if they have poor

health and we already have very poor access to specialists. High school

students do not have access to support services like services for students

with alcoholic parents. We provide through the Department, a good Health

and Counselling Service. This is essential in remote schools because there

is no community back-up for the school."

"This is the same

with the school nurse. It is essential that the nurses remain in the school."

There is a terrible injustice in that when you consider Indigenous health,

we find that the nurses are provided by the NT Government to white schools

and not to the Aboriginal schools."

"The school nurse

is shared between the high school and the Primary school. She is stationed

at the high school. There is no nurse at Yirrkala, Gapuwiyak or Galiwinku."

"The screening at

the primary school for hearing and eyesight has not been good. We are

picking up eyesight and hearing problems through the nurse."

Indigenous Education,

Bilingual and Bi-cultural Programs

"When I came to Nhulunbuy

I was stunned to find probably the most white school in the Northern Territory.

I applied for some IESIP (Indigenous Education Strategic Initiatives Program)

funds for us to research what we should be doing to address this problem.

We set up a group of Yolngu elders to consider the issues.

"What they decided

was that they wanted the students to learn about their languages and their

culture. They put in terms of the 3 Rs: Recognise their culture; Respect

culture; and Reconciliation. They also thought there was a need to work

closely with parents and staff to improve understanding. I put in a submission

to see this happen. Last year we had plenty of funding: we had $38,000.

We were able to employ Aboriginal people to come in and teach Yolngu language.

For all Year 8 students there was an option to learn either Indonesian

or Yolngu. We had two classes of Yolngu and one Indonesian class. This

year we applied for funding to go on to Year 9. The kids wanted to go

on to Year 9, the parents wanted to go on to Year 9 but they gave us only

$20,000 to run double the program.

"We decided that

it was impossible to run all of the program on the $20,000. We have had

to scrub the camp component of the program where our students went with

Yirrkala students to the Homelands Communities. We are going to be scratching

to do what we do; to simply run the classes. The Department response was

that they had to really fight to give us any money at all. The rationale

is that the Indigenous language programs are for the Indigenous people.

Which means really that the only people who have to change are the Yolngu

people and the Balanda don't have to change. Yet this program was what

the local Yolngu wanted. Now we are working very closely with Yirrkala

CEC to try and bring the two places closer. Yirrkala got no money to continue

the program and we have been told that next year we will probably get

nothing."

"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."

"We had a small grant

so that the Yolngu people could work with the parents of the children

in the evenings. This was really well evaluated by the parents. This program

is so fragile though, and there is some talk amongst the Yolngu as to

why their people are working with the white kids, and shouldn"t these

resources go back to the Yolngu community."

"There are a few

Yolngu children at the primary school though they have difficulty with

the class material. I have to say though that there is a distinct cultural

difference between Yolngu and Balanda. There are different parental expectations."

"I have seen ESL

support programs where NESB children in Darwin are exposed to intensive

English language programs. We had a class from Yirrkala here using the

science laboratory and I was appalled at the teaching methodology. These

teachers had no ESL experience and they understood nothing about language

learning. They need a person on their staff who understands ESL and yet

every child in their school is an ESL learner. It should be a prerequisite

that every teacher who goes out to these schools should have ESL training."

"The Indigenous children

at Nhulunbuy High School are not Yolngu. They are from other communities

outside of this area. There are 15 Indigenous children at the school.

They are from Broome, from Katherine, from Darwin and their parents are

here to work."

"In the last 20 years

the bilingual approach has been separated from the ESL approach. Of course

now the Department is looking to replace Bilingual with ESL but how are

they going to do that when there are not the staff to teach ESL? Anyone

who knows anything about language learning knows that it is important

to learn to read and write in your first language. They talk about the

constant battle of keeping the Yolngu children in the school, but how

can we expect to build the relationship between the school and the community

when there is the threat to take their language away."

"They [the Northern

Territory Government] are just cutting money out where there is going

to be the least noise and where there is the least concern about the votes,

because the votes don't go to them anyway."

Professional development

"I know from my involvement

with Council of Disadvantaged Schools Organisation [CODSO] that there

is no travel money for people on committees so that it is only people

from Darwin who participate and make decisions about schooling in those

committees. If rural and remote people are not represented at those meetings,

then how can our needs be represented? Teleconferencing is still second

best but at least it would allow some kind of inclusion. There must be

funding for this."

"The forums for rural

and remote parents are CODSO and Isolated Children's Parents Association

[ICPA]. Teacher involvement can be on SAT committees and yet there is

no money for travel here either. Teachers can not participate in professional

development so it is no wonder that they want to go back to the cities."

"I believe the Management

Travel Funds have been badly managed. Some groups have used these funds

wisely. We have two different types of needs. We have one Physical Education

teacher. There is a workshop on working with disabled children and that

is a good one to send one staff member to, but with Information Technology

for example, a person can come out for two weeks and work with a whole

range of people here and at Yirrkala. I really think that they don't work

out how to maximise the resources and the travel."

"When there is professional

development we have to find relief teachers, and not just for the professional

development PD day but also for the days of travel. Teachers lose professional

development by staying in outback communities. PD is run from 3pm until

9pm in the afternoon in Darwin. That costs us 3 days and travel expenses.

I'm prepared to do it and spend the money, but I know that some principals

won't spend the money. There's a lack of recognition that our teachers

miss out on professional association meetings, sporting functions, and

hearing speakers. When they come to a town like this they feel like they

are missing out, and they are."

Last

updated 2 December 2001.