Opinion & Commentary
The three 'R's of Northern Territory Indigenous education: responsibility, reform and 'rithmetic
Ms Scrymgour, the Northern Territory Minister for Education, is to be congratulated for taking responsibility for the crisis in Northern Territory Indigenous education by directing her Department of Education, Employment and Training to post national literacy and numeracy test results on its website. All Australian children will be sitting year 3, 5, 7, and 9 literacy and numeracy tests from 13 to 16 May 2008. In the past most children in remote areas did not sit these tests because their teachers knew that they could not pass them. In May, all children will be required to sit the tests. By insisting that the numbers of children enrolled, the numbers who sit the tests, and their pass rates are posted on the internet, Ms Scrymgour is leading Australia. This school-by-school information will provide essential data for school reform, and will enable Prime Minister Rudd to give his promised report about the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students on the first day that Parliament sits in 2009.
Ms Scrymgour’s education plan unfortunately does not include curriculum and teaching reforms that are essential to ensuring that Indigenous children’s test results start to move toward those of non-Indigenous children. But she has also taken a brave step in promising to establish Community Partnership Education Boards that will presumably replace current school councils, whose main function seems to be to collect fees for the councilors. If the new Education Boards consist of volunteer mums, dads, and others concerned with community educational outcomes, Ms Scrymgour will learn what concerns remote parents.
Mums and dads in remote communities are worried because, despite attending school for years, their children still cannot speak English, read, write or count. These children are being shut out of jobs in remote communities and in nearby mining, tourism, and other industries. Non-Indigenous staff are still being recruited for semiskilled jobs, and they dominate all skilled employment. Mums and dads want their children to be able to take jobs as teachers, nurses, and real rangers and also as lawyers, doctors, and administrators.
The new Education Boards will soon convince Ms Scrymgour that except for a small dysfunctional minority, parents try to send their children to school, but ineffectual, often chaotic classes kill off attendance. Competent teachers do not have attendance problems, but they complain they have to teach decent curriculums surreptitiously.
Mums and dads in remote communities are illiterate, and they cannot count very well, but they are not stupid. The recognition that there is a crisis in Northern Territory education is due to their concerns. They know that their children have to learn in English from preschool to get decent jobs, and they want disciplined schools open for full school days, weeks, and terms, with sport, music and other after-school programs. Most remote communities have some internet communication. As the mums and dads see the test results for each of their schools posted on the Education Department website, they will be able to judge their school’s performance. Ms Scrymgour should not be surprised if they insist on curriculum and teaching reforms and want their children to attend mainstream secondary schools alongside non-Indigenous children instead of being relegated to ghetto ‘community education centres.’
The weakest component of Ms Scrymgour’s education plan is the ’rithmetic. Ms Scrymgour’s budget includes $4 million to turn two remote ‘learning centres’ into primary schools. The $2 million needed per school indicates the parlous state of these ‘learning centres.’ But there are more than 50 of these centres, and with a budget of $4 million a year, Ms Scrymgour’s plan would take more than 10 years to give children in all of them basic facilities such as ablution blocks and resident teachers.
Ms Scrymgour’s proposal confirms that no thought has been given to housing for the 200 additional teachers for whom Ms Macklin, the Commonwealth Minister for Indigenous Affairs, has contributed funding to 2011. Most additional teachers in remote schools will continue to drive in or fly in. Many children will still only be taught for 25% to 30% of each school term. Can reasonable benchmark passes be expected from these children?
No budget has been allocated to the 10,000 teenagers and young men and women in their twenties whose schooling was so negligent that they are illiterate and non-numerate, and hence not employable. A request to Ms Gillard, the Commonwealth Minister for Education, to let the $700 tutorial vouchers available for children that do not pass benchmark tests be used in remote communities, did not even elicit the courtesy of a reply. This scheme is evidently to be ended. Yet remedial teaching for these youngsters is urgent.
As a supplement to public funding, student and ‘green nomad’ volunteers could be mobilised for literacy and numeracy campaigns. Students could camp in remote communities during their vacations. ‘Green nomads’ could pull up their caravans for two or three months of literacy and numeracy tutoring in remote communities so that there would not be housing problems. But the Northern Territory Department of Education strongly discourages volunteer efforts. Mainstream schools that want to help remote schools by student, teacher, and parent interaction are asked to enter into such detailed and complex legal agreements with the Northern Territory government that ‘twinning’ mainstream schools with remote ones is not possible. Qualified and experienced teachers volunteering for remedial teaching for three months in a remote community have been prevented from doing so by the Northern Territory Department of Education.
The illiterate and non-numerate Indigenous youngsters who have been failed by past education cannot be allowed to become a ‘lost generation.’ Surely Ms Gillard, Ms Macklin, and Ms Scrymgour, the federal and territory ministers responsible for education and Indigenous affairs, have the wit, the energy, and the political power to ensure that a campaign to rescue literacy and numeracy in remote communities is budgeted for and that federal, state, and territory bureaucrats are told to stop obstructing volunteer efforts to supplement it.
Emeritus Professor Helen Hughes is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies. Her report Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory is available at www.cis.org.au.
