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NIT FORUMS: Rudd to be tested on closing school gap
Issue 174 - 02 Apr 2009
ISSUE 174, April 2, 2009: The Rudd government is about to face a major test of its commitment to 'closing the gap' in remote education, writes BILL FOGARTY*.
The Northern Territory government's announcement of its first comprehensive outstations policy is expected in the next week or so.
Clear policy is long overdue, but in the process will the federal government abnegate its responsibility to the Aboriginal students in remote areas who are about to have services to their schools withdrawn?
More than half of Australia's 1,000 outstations are located in the NT.
Outstations, or homelands, sit at the sharp end of Indigenous affairs and present complex policy environments that have bedevilled politicians and bureaucrats for over 30 years.
One main difficulty is that the Aboriginal people who live in these remote areas will not conform to the dominant proposition that their lives are economically unviable or their communities too remote.
Time and again Aboriginal people have demonstrated that they want to stay on their land and make a success of things for generations to come.
They are also Australian citizens, entitled to basic services such as health and education and this is where outstation residents become a problem for policy makers.
Such services cost money.
In a speech at the Australian National University in 2005, former Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Amanda Vanstone questioned the viability of outstations in remote Australia.
Much of the recent policy discussion on outstations has focused on the veracity of this proposition.
What is often forgotten in such debates is that the re-establishment of outstations back on country was made by Aboriginal people with the full support of the Commonwealth Government, in good faith and with an expectation that services, particularly education, would and could be provided.
The movement of people 'back to country' was an Indigenous response to problems concerning alcohol, violence and poor living conditions that characterised many of the artificially created "townships" of the assimilation era.
However, participants in the outstations movement did not seek to disengage from the state or mainstream Australia.
In the early 1970s, the Commonwealth Government provided establishment grants of up to $10,000 for traditional owner groups wishing to return to their country. This was done on the proviso that both the Commonwealth and Territory governments discharge their duties concerning equitable levels of service provision.
The question of who should fund education in outstations has been a vexed issue since their inception.
In May 1987, the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs tabled its report entitled Return to country: The Aboriginal homelands movement in Australia.
The Committee recognized that both the Commonwealth and states/territories should accept responsibility for funding outstation schools.
In reality, the Northern Territory has always argued that service provision costs are much higher in remote outstations and should be further subsidised by the Commonwealth, while the Commonwealth has argued that service provision is a state/territory responsibility and that additional costs are covered under the Commonwealth Grants Commission allocations.
As a result, in the last 30 years outstations generally received extremely limited services.
In the NT, education in an outstation has only been provided after a group of families built their own school, provided their own teacher and demonstrated that they could run the school for at least 12 months without any support.
Given the funding tension and federal government failure to develop a robust outstation policy, it is easy to understand that the NT Government is in an extremely difficult position concerning education in outstations.
This challenge has been exacerbated by the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding for Indigenous Housing, Accommodation and Related Services with the Australian government, which effectively hands all responsibility for outstation services and infrastructure to the Northern Territory Government, without sufficient capital or recurrent funding to maintain current levels of service.
Fast forward to 2009, and the NT government is about to run an argument that outstations are generally economically unviable, that outstation school outcomes are poor and that 'proper' education cannot be provided in these schools as it is cost prohibitive.
Therefore, if people choose to live in these areas they must face the fact that their children will not be provided an equitable education.
Undoubtedly, there will be some concessions in terms of token offers of transport or perhaps a distance learning model, but the possibility of an Aboriginal child in an outstation getting an equitable education with a child anywhere else in Australia will be unlikely.
This reflects very poorly on the NT government, but at least their position, pragmatic and perhaps morally limited as it is, will be determined by the fact that they simply don't have the money.
No such concessions can be made for the federal government.
At a time when the Government's policy of 'closing the gap' and its controversial continuation of the intervention has educational achievement for Indigenous students as one of its cornerstones, it will be embarrassing for the federal government when it realizes that it is about to preside over possible closures of Indigenous schools and learning centres in the Northern Territory-thus widening the education gap.
Experience shows that many outstation students without a schooling option in the bush generally do not attend school at all.
While it is true that some students may integrate into 'hub' schools or boarding facilities, cultural and logistical barriers mean that without an outstation education program, many of these students simply drop out of education altogether.
The potential loss of anywhere between 900 and 2,000 students to the NT education system is something that should simply not be countenanced.
Theses figures become more stark when a cursory estimate based on census data shows that at least one-tenth of the population, or around 1,000 children in outstations, are currently under the age of four.
Adding these figures to the potentially disengaged in a year or two is certain to widen the gap in Indigenous education, counter to Rudd government and COAG stated goals.
The next couple of weeks will see rhetoric meet reality for the Rudd government in remote Indigenous education.
Will it invest in closing the education gap or sit back and watch as the NT Government winds back services to outstation schools?
nitforums@nit.com.au
Bill Fogarty is a Doctoral Research Scholar at the Australian National University, based at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR).
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