Opinion & Commentary
Commonwealth government fails remote Indigenous students
The second round of National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests took place this week. Australia wide, all children in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 will be tested for literacy and numeracy.
In 2008, 25% of Indigenous students failed the (NAPLAN) tests in remote and very remote New South Wales, 50% failed in South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland, and more than 75% failed in the Northern Territory. In the Northern Territory 20% of Indigenous students attending remote schools did not sit the tests. When those not sitting are included with those who failed, nearly 100% of students in Northern Territory remote Indigenous schools did not pass the tests.
But remarkably, Indigenous students who attended mainstream schools had the same results as non-Indigenous students. In Victoria, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, Indigenous children performed like other Australian children with failure rates of barely 10%. It is simply a lie that there is a ‘gap’ between the literacy and numeracy of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. The gap – indeed a chasm – is between mainstream schools attended by most Australian students and the ‘Aboriginal’ remote schools with dumbed down curriculums in remote Indigenous communities. These schools are nowhere near the standard of mainstream ‘remote’ schools in Broome, Mt Isa or Alice Springs that are dominantly attended by non-Indigenous students.
Last year, the Commonwealth government contributed $100 million to Indigenous education in the Northern Territory. But this additional funding has had no impact on Northern Territory education policies. Instead of using the Commonwealth funding to bring remote schools to mainstream standards, last week’s Northern Territory’s Budget papers reduced the numeracy and literacy pass rates expected of Indigenous students in the Territory!
Reflecting the continuing failure of commonwealth, state and territory Indigenous education policies, most students attending remote Aboriginal schools in the Northern Territory and many attending remote Aboriginal schools in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland, are again likely to fail the literacy and numeracy tests held this week.
The Northern Territory’s 46 Homeland Learning Centres are the worst of the 200 or so non-performing remote Aboriginal schools across Australia. In last year’s Northern Territory budget two of these Centers were to be turned into schools at a cost of $2 million each. This implied a 22-year timetable for getting rid of Homeland Learning Centres. But in last week’s Northern Territory Budget this program was stalled. No more Centres are to become schools. Instead a paltry $2 million has been spread for ‘improvements’ across 44 Homeland Learning Centres such as the one pictured.
The Commonwealth and the NT governments admit that Homeland Learning Centres are only pretend schools. To appease parents for sending their children to these Centres, the parents are paid Commonwealth Assistance for Isolated Children (AIC) allowances available only in locations that do not have government schools. As most parents in the remote settlements where the learning centres are located are too illiterate to fill out the AIC forms, school administrations do it for them, charging administrative fees of 15% to 50%. The AIC scheme was surely not intended to bribe parents in remote communities so that they would not complain about sub-standard schools.
Most Community Education Centres and other remote schools attended dominantly by Indigenous students, also fail to meet mainstream standards. Appalling remote school results reflect the short hours schools are open each day, week and term. Children miss school because of prolonged funerals. Cultural festivals are scheduled during term time. The Commonwealth’s Community Festivals for Education Engagement program contributes to remote schools’ dysfunction by funding ‘festivals’ that take students out of school during term time to learn ‘it’s fun to be at school every day.’
The Commonwealth’s reinstatement of permits hides schooling apartheid from most Australians, but not from Indigenous parents who are aware that dumbed-down curriculums mean that their children go to school year after year without learning to read, write or count let alone learning the geography, history and science that would enable them to go on to further education.
Blaming parents for not sending their children to school is being used as an excuse not to reform poorly performing remote Indigenous schools. Dysfunctional families and communities are undoubtedly a problem, but sub-standard schools and dumbed-down curriculums are even more responsible for non-attendance. Quarantining welfare income is proving successful, but where incentives do not work, truancy laws must be implemented.
Non-performing remote schools are a tiny proportion of the total number of schools in the states and even in the Northern Territory, a 100 or so non-performing remote schools are only about a third of all schools. Australia has the resources to bring non-performing remote schools to mainstream standards. Governments are avoiding reform by claiming an ethnic ‘gap’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. Reform targets have thus moved backwards from ‘fix the problem in four years’ in 1997 to ‘fix half the problems in 10 years’ in 2008. To end the national disgrace of separate Indigenous school standards, all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children should be receiving mainstream education within three years, not some time in the distant future.
Professor Helen Hughes is a Senior Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney. Mark Hughes is an independent researcher. Their Policy Monograph Revisiting Indigenous Education is available on www.cis.org.au.
