Making remote schools work just takes commitment...but from whom??

The failure of policy is the result of insisting that illiteracy and non-numeracy reflect an ethnic gap between indigenous and non-indigenous students.

The National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy tests of children in school years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in 2008 proved there was no such gap, but showed a chasm between the literacy and numeracy of children attending remote indigenous schools and all other Australian children.

In Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT where there are no remote schools, indigenous children's results are the same as for non-indigenous children. About 10 per cent of all children did not sit tests or failed them.

But for indigenous students in remote NSW schools, failure rates were 25 per cent; in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland they were 50 per cent; and in the Northern Territory they were 75 per cent. When the number of children not sitting tests are added to those failing in the NT, almost 100 per cent of children in remote indigenous schools fail all numeracy and literacy tests.

NAPLAN results show that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who attend mainstream schools in Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT have mainstream achievement levels. While a handful of exceptional remote schools work to mainstream standards, non-performing remote schools deprive their students of the life skills that every Australian needs.

Low achievement is not a problem of indigenous children but of non-performing remote schools. Low achievement is not because of non-performing remote schools, it is due to the myriad of challenges that face the remote school.

For many indigenous children standard Australian English is not their first language and they are not exposed to standard Australian English at any place other than school.

Overcrowding in houses means that children don't get the quantity or quality of sleep that they require, and constant disruptions in the home environment mean that children lack routine and struggle with the routine of coming to school.

Violence at home spills over into classroom, and a lot of teaching time is lost to behaviour management.

Children are often sick with illnesses rarely seen in cities such as boils, scabies, malnutrition and other infections. They miss school and are sometimes permanently impaired because of these illnesses. In my classroom 87% of my students have hearing loss due to poorly treated ear infections. They also miss large amounts of school if caregivers are sick, for funerals, and due to wet season flooding. 

Many children come to school without food.

Teachers are over worked in a system that clearly does not function, and our recommendations regarding change in the system are not listened to, which is one factor in  the high rates of staff turnover.

Separate, substandard curriculums and limited teaching capacities are a characteristic of non-performing remote schools. Dumbed-down curriculums do not develop literacy and maths skills by building on successive blocks of knowledge.Children rarely attend school for sucessive blocks of time so building on blocks of knowledge is impossible.

I find the assumption that part reason that Indigenous students are underachieving is the limited capacity of the teacher. I have never seen a group of such committed teachers as the ones I currently work with. They arrive at school at 7.30 and most dont leave before 4.30 and we are back at school on the weekends. We constantly think, hope, dispair. We sit together discussing how we can put this great jigsaw of mismatching pieces together to form an education. We have travelled state lines to be here on the front lines of education in Australia to find that we dont get back up, we get gunned down. We are gunned down by simplistic answers put forward by smooth talking politions and journalists who have not spent any time in these remote schools.

Many children are not learning English in early school years, although worldwide research indicates that young children learn languages more easily than older children. Many bilingual programs are thus, in effect, non-lingual, with children not becoming literate in any language. Incentives that reward school attendance have a role to play, but truancy is a matter of law and attendance must be enforced.

A few exceptional remote schools that follow mainstream curriculums exist. Some dysfunctional parents fail to send their children to school, but many concerned parents are aware that their children are not being educated. The implication is that the majority of parents send their children to school every day. This certainly has not been my experience. It is estimated in my community that only 2/3 of children in the community are enrolled at school and even then there is only a 60% attendence rate. There are 38 children in my class, but on average about 20 attend school, and only 6 of those children would come every day. Parents, the community, the police and the school must work together to change this, as non-attendence is the fundamental reason for failure in school. The school can have exciting programs and attendence charts but if parents do not send their children, how can the school be blamed for their lack of education? This is not to say that the parents are solely to blame, it is infinately more complex than that.

They see that their children are at school only a few hours a day, a few days a week, and that the remote school year is much shorter than that of other schools. This is not true. The remote school year is only one week shorter than that of most states and that is primarily due to the difficulties in acessing some schools in height of the wet season.

Prolonged funerals take children out of school, but so do festivals scheduled in term time. The reinstatement of permits has hidden non-performing schools from most Australians, but not from parents.

Early last year the federal government provided nearly $100 million in additional funding for NT education. Fifty of the 200 funded teachers who were to be added by 2011 were supposed to be in place by September last year. The states and the NT also have increased funding for indigenous education. But there have been no substantive policy changes.

The failures of remote education are systemic. Present government approaches fail because they are not evidence-based. Homeland Learning Centres in the NT clearly indicate that separate is not equal.

Alternatives must be found for smaller groups of children. If they cannot be taught by distance education, like other small groups of Australian children, they will have to be bussed, boarded Monday to Friday or during term time, or their parents must move to larger centres during term time.

Throughout Australia, policy reform must tackle inadequate buildings and equipment, introduce mainstream curriculums and teaching standards, and apply standard administrative rules in 200 non-performing remote schools that are only a very small proportion of Australia's more than 9600 schools. But departments of education must take back the responsibility for running their schools from unqualified staff and community activists to ensure that education priorities are met.

Assistant teachers cannot be left hanging. They can be employed as teachers' aides or enrolled in courses that will give them nationally recognised qualifications.

School choice is essential for raising standards. Where communities chose to establish an independent school, their decision should be supported by education departments. And the federal Government's election promise to publish individual school-by-school results must be implemented so parents are able to evaluate schooling alternatives.

Aboriginal and Torres Islander children in remote communities must not be viewed as different from other Australian children. So long as cultural traits justify the removal of children from mainstream literacy and numeracy, science and humanities classes, remote schools will fail. Other children in Australia for whom English is a second language are given seperate literacy programs to assist learning. The curriculim has not been 'dumbed down' for indigenous students, rather it has been adapted for their zone of development. The students in my school are not considered mainstream. We are considered a 'special school' however, unlike other special schools with a teacher student ratio of 6:1 we have 20:1 and are expected to achieve the same results. 

A three-year timetable is realistic if there is the political will to transform non-performing schools and bring remote indigenous literacy and numeracy to mainstream levels. Non-specific targets and decade-long time frames are no longer acceptable. Australia has the resources and it must find the political will to transform non-performing schools.

There is no doubt that education in remote areas needs to change, and that indigenous Australians are severly disadvantaged in getting an equal education.  The cycles of non-attendence, failure of students and teacher burn-out need to be broken. Class sizes should be kept to a maximum of ten students. A home liaison officer needs to be employed to work with centrelink and the police to ensure enrollment and school attendence. Teachers must be valued and allowed to do their jobs, and appropriate measures should be taken to support them in this endevour. Indigenous assistant teachers should be given the oppotunities to study to become full time class teachers.

All Australian children deserve the same high standards of education.

Finally - to my 38 intelligent, cheeky, bright, smiling children - it is my hope that you will receive an education that will open the world up to you. You have some of the most remarkable history surging through your veins, and some of the most horrific, but it is you who will take yourselves into the future.