Thank you for the opportunity to comment, perhaps you might consider my thoughts on the issue at hand. I would like to put forward an idea to help address the issue of non-attendance in remote Indigenous schools. At this point, I would like to say that I believe any child from any school in Australia can attend school as well as anybody, irrespective of their social standing, culture or ethnicity. My dilemma is that it’s seems easier for a child not to attend school, drop out with no prospects for the future and possibly become involved in the juvenile correction system, rather than attend school. From this position a host of opportunities open up to a young person that aren’t available to those who are at school.
I want to put forward an argument that centres on attendance as an issue when students’ don’t have a clear vision or direction for themselves during, and then just as importantly, after school. Evidence will show that children who don’t attend regularly, in the main have been that way throughout their school career. I don’t want to talk about the reasons for that. I want to focus on giving purpose and direction throughout the student’s entire school career and especially in the early secondary years in our remote Indigenous schools.
I would like to propose that we modify our curriculum to make sure students from year eight onwards are exposed to programs that will give them real qualifications and the abilities to match, in whatever fields they would like to pursue. For example, White Cards, Blue Cards, appropriate work experience, literacy and numeracy skills for purposeful participation in the occupation of their choice. In my particular school community, I could then offer, for instance, an actual opening for them in a field of employment such as the Pastoral Industry. This will give purpose to attending school, a real job as early as the end of year ten, and show younger students’ the reason for attending regularly and getting an education.
To do this, I propose schools re-evaluate and change the way we present our curriculum to children. Furthermore funding bodies working in the field of Indigenous education, training and employment would need to change their guidelines around entry ages of participants. I would like to implement programs that are at this stage only available to people of the ages of sixteen and older into our secondary curriculum. This would not mean watering down or changing anything Education Queensland has in place. Nor would it be anything less than that desired by parents and communities, and prescribed by State, Federal Governments and Indigenous policy makers.
This I believe would help to break the cycle of non-attendance and lack of opportunities for young people with limited access to real job prospects. It would not involve a lot of extra expense, staffing or changes to the way schools operate. With further discussion I believe it would go a long way to ‘Closing the Gap’, and addressing attendance anomalies’ within remote Indigenous schools.