Closing the Gap

National Reconciliation Week celebrations this year marked two significant anniversaries in Australia’s reconciliation journey – 50 years since the 1967 referendum and 25 years since the historic Mabo decision. As we commemorate these milestones, it is appropriate that we also pause to consider issues of significance to our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members and reflect on how our union might do more to promote reconciliation, IEUA-QNT Research Officer Adele Schmidt (pictured above with colleagues) writes.

As teachers and support workers in non government education institutions, our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members are addressing the challenges on two fronts: as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and as providers of education for future generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

Poor progress

The latest Close the Gap report indicates that, on fundamental markers of quality of life, such as life expectancy, child mortality and employment, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continue to lag behind Australians from other cultural backgrounds.

This is, quite simply, unacceptable and it is for this reason that our Union strongly supports initiatives such as national Close the Gap Day held in March each year, which aims to raise awareness and lobby government to increase its support for healthcare initiatives for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Perhaps most troubling however, is that the Close the Gap report also indicates that access to early childhood education, attendance at school, and reading and numeracy skill levels for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students also continue to lag behind non Indigenous students.

Successive governments have made numerous attempts to address educational disadvantage. Most recently, the Federal House of Representatives has been undertaking an extended Inquiry into Educational Opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, which commenced in 2015.

Both IEUA federal body and our Queensland and Northern Territory Branch have made submissions to this inquiry.

Based on input from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members working with students in a variety of settings, ranging from specialist/community schools in urban areas, through to smaller Catholic and independent schools in rural and remote communities, our submissions raised two general points:

• A need to recognise the differing circumstances and needs of students in urban, regional and remote communities, and

• The importance of integrating education with broader support services for families and communities.

Members were particularly concerned that, while a child’s experience of education has a significant impact on the trajectory of their life, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students struggle to engage with learning in the first instance because they face ongoing challenges that have their genesis in unfair and inequitable policies and practices of colonisation.

We have known for many years that changing perceptions and experiences of education for these students requires a long term commitment, commencing with early childhood education programs that are respectful of the language and culture of the child and continuing through to constructive, collaborative relationships with family and community members and other support services.

Building relationships that improve outcomes for students takes time and persistence, because empowering community members and education professionals to work together and develop the highly situated, locally responsive solutions required for success needs long term, stable funding and resources.

Our full submission to the Senate Standing Committee’s Inquiry into Educational Opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students can be viewed at http://www.qieu.asn.au/.

Community schools work

Two specialist schools in Brisbane have worked hard to develop and implement community models of education. The Aboriginal and Islander Community School (also known as The Murri School) and Hymba Yumba Community Hub are both governed by independent boards comprising education professionals and community members. Both schools place high emphasis on comprehensive support services, facilitating not just education but also students’ access to auditory testing, paediatric assessments, regular health and dental checks and psychological support.

The schools, and their staff, also invest in relationships with parents and other community members. The Murri School, for example, runs initiatives such as family camps in the school holidays, offers a Certificate III in Education Support for parents and community members, encourages parent volunteers and regularly invites community members into the school for morning teas.

Such activities are important mechanisms to establish trust with previous generations, whose own experience of the education system has, all too often, been less than positive.

The experiences of these schools show that this model of schooling is improving outcomes. The Aboriginal and Islander Community School, for example, has attendance rates as high as 90% for primary students and 81% for secondary and, in 2014, 70% of eligible students graduated with a Queensland Certificate of Education. Similarly, Hymba Yumba’s first cohort of OP-eligible students graduated last year, with 80% continuing on to university study.

Boarding schools are not an adequate replacement for quality local learning.

In response to the federal House of Representatives Inquiry in 2015, IEUA-QNT members working in rural and remote communities drew attention to the substantial educational and social impact of limited schooling opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Of particular concern to our members was a failure to recognise that access to boarding school does not negate, or compensate for, lack of access to quality education in a student’s home community.

Negative consequences

While our Union recognises the good intentions behind many schemes offering subsidised placements at metropolitan schools for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, such programs can have unintended negative consequences for students and their home communities.

The intention may be to provide students with access to quality education and create a new generation of leaders working in a wide range of fields, but the reality is that there are many reasons why boarding schools prove unsuccessful for individual students, ranging from homesickness and dislike of the boarding environment, to a lack of understanding of the boarding context and expectations.

Data collected to inform our Union’s response to the Inquiry into Educational Opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students indicates that up to 53% of junior secondary and 63% of senior secondary students from Aboriginal communities spent at least some period of time at boarding school between Term 1 2014 and Term 1 2016.

Members also indicated that the sense of failure some students feel upon return can translate into arrogance or aggression toward their local community school and elders, leading to long term disengagement with education.

The problem is often exacerbated when boarding schools from urban centres time recruitment visits to local communities prior to school census periods. As the students are enrolled at boarding schools during the census period, when students then return from boarding school and resume their studies at local community schools, allocations of staff, funding and resources are often inadequate.

The prevailing view of members with experience in remote communities is that a reliance on boarding schools cannot, and should not, replace investment in local schools and support services.

Better outcomes

Our Union strongly supports embedding quality schools and support services within communities, but we also recognise that not all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students reside in communities where establishing and maintaining a community school is a viable option.

For this reason, our Union is also proud to support Reconciliation Australia’s Narragunnawali: Reconciliation in Schools and Early Learning initiative, which provides schools and early learning centres an opportunity to formalise their commitment to actions that can increase engagement and improve outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

RAP

IEUA-QNT’s Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) was endorsed by Reconciliation Australia in June 2016, acknowledging our ethical and professional responsibility to positively influence the perceptions and behaviours of future generations by working with members to support the process of reconciliation within their own school communities.

The RAP operates at the Innovate level in accordance with Reconciliation Australia guidelines.

RAP Caretaker and IEUA-QNT Branch Secretary Terry Burke said that to operate at an Innovate level means our union work goes beyond symbolic gestures, with clear actions that will have a lasting, positive impact on interactions between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other Australians.

“The actions incorporated within our RAP outline our belief that building and maintaining meaningful engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members and their local communities is an important and necessary step to achieving Reconciliation in Australia,” Terry Burke said.

The RAP details significant events and actions, including:

• increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives on union bodies

• celebrating NAIDOC Week

• marking Close the Gap Day

• acknowledging Country at meetings and events

• supporting Narragunnawali Reconciliation in Schools, and

• increasing participation in our Union’s Yarning Circle.

The RAP will also help facilitate understanding, promote meaningful engagement, increase equality and develop employment opportunities.

Further information about Narragunnawali can be obtained from the Reconciliation Australia website http://www.reconciliation.org.au/narragunnawali/.