Boarding - What Works - The Work Program

1 For most Indigenous students living in remoteareas access to secondary schooling, especiallyto the upper levels, means leaving home to go to a school which makes provision for is not a new phenomenon. Some of theschools providing these sorts of opportunitieshave been doing so for more than 50 years, withwell established links to particular communitiesand families. However the increase in the numberof young people being born and growing up inremote communities and the higher levels ofaspirations for their educational success beingdriven from a range of sources means that the demand for this type of provision is increasing. The Australian Government provides supplementary funding to supportboarding schools as well as the families ofstudents that attend these late 2006 a number of people, mainly principals, representing 17 Boarding schools with a significant group of Indigenous studentsenrolled, spoke with the Australian Government sMinister for Education Science and Training, the Hon.

2 Julie Bishop MP, about issues that they were confronting. Understandably, some of these issues related to funding and administrative matters. Others focused on health and well-being and improving theinteractivity between the relevant responsibilities of various government departments. But there was a lot ofgood news as well. What Works . The Work Program : CORE ISSUES6 BoardingWhat Works . The Work Program is a set of resources designed to help schools andthose who work in them improve outcomes for Indigenous students. In most of the Core issues series we try to define some topic-based key directions for practicalaction. This edition takes a slightly different approach in that it describes what peopleare doing at present in a small but growing field of Indigenous Core issuespaper has been prepared to share some of these experiences, particularly theprofessional issues confronted in working in theseschools and the ways found of moving towardsincreasingly successful operation.

3 The schoolparticipants in this forum were interviewed in early 2007. Their names and locations can be found at the end of the is important to understand the diversity of these schools (almost all of which are Catholic orindependent). Some are large with 1000 or moreenrolments, the majority being non-Indigenous daystudents, located in a capital city. Others, the majority,are small with fewer than 100 students in moreisolated settings where as one informant said thereare fewer of the social diversions that might causeproblems in the bigger centres . A small majority have an enrolment composed entirely of Indigenousstudents, but in one there are 15 Indigenous boardersamong 1100 other students. Some of the schools have a long history; others are only a few years have longstanding relationships with particularcommunities, in several cases that being the reasonfor the school s formation.

4 Others are still buildingsuch relationships. It was a surprise to learn thatstudents in one of these schools, and not one of thelarger ones, come from five states and the NorthernTerritory; and while one can provide buses to collectmore than 90 percent of its students from theirhomes, most of them have students who need totravel by air for at least one leg of their journey to also share some characteristics. Almost all the students we are focusing on here have English as a second language, in some cases StandardAustralian English as a second dialect. There is a small but significant proportion (somewherearound 10 15 percent) for whom English is aforeign some perspective, the total number of Indigenousboarding students in these schools is about 1600 if not a huge number, a reasonable sample.

5 But aswas pointed out consistently during the interviewsevery one of these young people has his or her ownstory which needs understanding and schools also share issues. In the interviews these were grouped under entry and orientation,the maintenance of social, emotional and physicalwell being, attendance, the development of academicskills, and, finally, transition from school to where? It will be noted that the perspectives represented are those of school andorientationWhere do the studentscome from, and why?The longer-established Boarding schools frequentlyhave long-standing relationships with particularcommunities, not necessarily in their immediatevicinity. A school in Sydney, for example, drawsmostly from quite specific but widely separatedcommunities in country New South Wales; one inForbes from towns in western New South Darwin schools have their own feeder areaswhich, while in the Top End, are not necessarily inthe Northern Territory.

6 PLC Perth has establishedrelationships with several communities in theKimberley. Abergowrie near Ingham in Queenslanddraws many of its boys from the Torres StraitIslands. Knowledge of the school and the people whorun it are of high significance, as is the tradition ofsending young people off to specific schools. Severalinstances were cited of current students whose thegrandparents had been students of the same family or friends is one importantconsideration in selecting students for one of these schools, the students notobviously part of the one family group workedout possible relationships, and discovered that all ofthem were related to each of the others are reluctant to enrol students who have no other immediate family or members of theircommunity enrolled. This was expressed in thesesorts of ways.

7 Very rarely do we have a student atschool who has no relations or other kids from theircommunity there. We would think long and hardbefore enrolling someone who was on their own. Kids who are on their own, single kids we callthem, they rarely stay. We must have more than one student from a community we have a broadtarget of a minimum of six and we encourageElders to come sometimes to stay with students inthe Boarding house. The need for us to understandand have strong and effective contact with theircommunities is paramount. 2 Community liaison may be conducted by staffemployed for the purpose the crucial significanceof this role was noted by the principals and almost allhad evidently found first-rate people for this purpose or by the school s executive staff who spend timetravelling to meet parents and community noting the substantial time and expenditurecosts of this process, those who did that wereemphatic about its value for all are pull and push factors involved in the decision to send students away to one of the push factors is the absence ofthe availability of other options for schooling.

8 Butmost of the informants also mentioned that somestudents parents at least would like them to spendthe years of adolescence away from the problems of growing up in their community. They also wantthem to have contact with the diverse versions of the wider world that these schools most commonly mentioned pull factor, fromthe perspective of principals, was the very strongwish of parents for their children to become literatein and confident with the use of spoken and writtenEnglish. Numeracy was mentioned as well, butliteracy is the dominant own aspirations are not quite as clear and, of course, vary enormously. But the followingview was not uncommon. They have difficulty inthinking, certainly in the initial stages, past the their immediate communities and what goes onthere.

9 Teacher aide, health worker perhaps, retail,traineeships .. There is plenty of work in themining industries which exist where many of ourstudents come from, but you need skills, sometimesof a reasonably high order, to get the jobs that areavailable. Sometimes its hard to get that across. Another informant suggested that, Our kids don t want to set goals. Life in the mainstream of Australian society is a dream that they may or may not have. We work on self esteem andbuilding ideas about the futures they may students have work experience with mentorsfrom outside the school to give them bigger ideasabout what they might be able to do. One school at least goes further. Students sign areciprocal agreement at entry where they providesome basic undertakings related to completion ofschool work, attendance and behaviour.

10 In returnthe school undertakes that no students will leavewithout direct, positive and available opportunitiesfor employment or further training. We share theresponsibility for succeeding. What sorts of challenges do the students face?Arrival in a new setting to live and work produceschallenges for anybody, especially where living inclose proximity with people many of whom youdon t know is students are mostly young adolescents oftenconfronting very new living arrangements. It s theroutine as much as anything, and being told what todo. A number, perhaps the majority, of the studentswe get are used to fending for themselves and livingvery independent lifestyles. We have a set of ruleswhich we hope are both generous and sensitive, butthey are still rules, and we do try very hard to makesure they are adhered to.