Strategies to Overcome Institutional Racism in Education. A Submission to the Collins Review of Aboriginal Education in the NT

Transcription

1 Strategies to Overcome Institutional Racism in Education. A Submission to the Collins Review of Aboriginal Education in the NT 20 th April 1999 Dr. Bob Boughton Indigenous Education Research Fellow C.R.C. for Indigenous and Tropical Health Menzies School of Health Research Central Australian Unit PO Box 8569, Alice Springs N.T Ph: (w) Fax: bob@menzies.su.edu.au

2 1 Introduction This submission is based on work I have done over the last 16 months as a Research Fellow in the Indigenous Education and Health Research Program of the Cooperative Research Centre for Indigenous and Tropical Health 1, as well as my previous research on Aboriginal education 2 and my personal experience of living and working in Alice Springs since The paper represents my own personal views, not the views of either the CRC or of my employer, the Menzies School of Health Research. It focuses in particularly on the situation in Central Australia My current position with the CRC resulted from a growing recognition among those working in Indigenous health of the relationship between education levels and health status. While research in this area is in its infancy in Australia, it has been welldocumented in work done over the last few decades overseas that improvements in the quantity and quality of education available to communities are a major contributing factor to them achieving better health. In particular, education for young women can have a dramatic effect on the health of the children born to them. It also appears that the kind of education which is most likely to result in such changes is an education which enables people to assert their rights. There is also a growing body of research evidence for the view that a major determinant of ill-health is the degree of powerlessness people experience in their lives. 4 This submission reflects my application of some of the findings of that work to the analysis of empirical data I have collected on the history and current situation of Aboriginal education in Central Australia 5. Racial Discrimination in NT Education Discussions about education provision in Aboriginal communities rarely touch upon the question of human rights, and yet racial discrimination is at the heart of current problems. In my view, the evidence is overwhelming that the situation in Aboriginal education in the NT today has resulted from a history of denial to Aboriginal peoples of their basic human rights, including their specific rights as Indigenous peoples. This history is not simply in the past. It continues up to the present, and if dramatic changes are not made, will continue into the foreseeable future. The quickest and surest way to achieve change in this system is for the people most affected to take action to change it themselves, employing the full range of legal and political remedies available nationally and internationally to people whose rights are being denied. This is unlikely to occur unless the immediate and primary focus of those seeking reform is placed not on the schools, or on the children attending or not attending them, but on the parents and community leaders and organisations who have primary responsibility for the welfare and education of their children and young people. 1 See Appendix 1, for background information on the CRC. 2 Appendix 2 is a list of recent relevant research projects and publications. 3 I worked for Tangentyere Council from , for the Institute for Aboriginal Development from , and for Batchelor College These findings are discussed in detail in a forthcoming paper I have written for the CRC, based on my review of the international research (Boughton, 1999) 5 Some of the contemporary data I have collected is summarised at Appendix 3.

3 2 In other words, Aboriginal people and their organisations must become more empowered in relation to the education system before real change will occur in this system. Achieving this requires an approach informed by theories and practices from the field of adult education and development, in particular its work in the area of human rights, indigenous rights, and the right to development. This approach turns on its head the most common way of defining the problem of Aboriginal education, the model characterised over a decade ago by Lane (1984) as tuition before rights. This model, which I reject, claims that people do not enjoy their basic human rights because they have insufficient education, because they are not, for example, sufficiently literate in the English language. This problem is then laid at the feet of the schools, who are expected to bring people up to the required level, often over one, two or even more generations, to the point where they can enjoy their rights. One feature of this approach is that the level of education thought necessary is constantly raised, in line with rising education levels in the non-indigenous community and changing practices in the economy. So what was considered enough in the past - a basic education - is no longer enough, and more years of schooling are required so people can reach the level where the can exercise their rights - to health, to work, to a living income, and to development in line with their aspirations. Anyone who seriously confronts the role of educational reform as a means to wider social change among impoverished peoples sooner or later comes to this point, which was most succinctly put by the great Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. Those who are not educated - Freire was writing of the illiterate in the slums of Brazils shanty towns in the 1970s - are not marginal to society, they are an integral part of it. Their situation will never improved simply by trying to include them within the structures and institutions which helped to make them what they are. The problem lies in the structures themselves. A primary function of education systems in the modern world is to reproduce in the next generation the knowledge, skills and attitudes which are necessary for them to take their allotted place in society, and in particular, in the economy. The problem Aboriginal people face in relation to the education system in Central Australia is that the society and economy which this system has primarily been designed to serve has almost no place for up to half the students whom it enrols. 6 These students are currently destined to become an impoverished surplus population, whose needs for housing, infrastructure, health and welfare services, and for minimal levels of administrative oversight and regulation, will maintain a need for skilled non-aboriginal labour to migrate here form the urban areas in the south and east, thus boosting local demand and helping to drive economic growth which benefits them very little. 7 The education system contributes to this development process in at least two important ways. Firstly, the education industry is a major employer of the non- 6 See Appendix 3, especially Table 7. 7 In the last ten years, nearly half the new jobs in the central Australian region have been in community services, and a 1989 study of the local economy found that one third of the money in circulation could be directly traced to the servicing of the Indigenous population. The predictions about surplus population are based on the work of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at ANU, especially Taylor (1998)

4 3 Aboriginal professionals who migrate here from the cities, many of whom remain here only for a short while. Secondly, the education system helps legitimate the current and worsening levels of impoverishment within the black population - which makes up the majority of those who will remain permanently in the region - by failing them according to its standards, which are largely determined by the needs of the non- Aboriginal economy and society. This will continue to be the case until such time as the NT adopts other models for its economic and social development, ones which do not treat the Aboriginal population in central Australia as surplus, and which do not rely principally on non-aboriginal labour. This, by the way, was clearly understood by the Aboriginal rights movement of the 1960s, such as the NT Council for Aboriginal Rights, and the national network of which it was a part. The denial to Aboriginal people of their basic human rights, as set out in international law in conventions, treaties and instruments, has always been one of the major conditions which has allowed northern development to occur. It was this which drove the campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s Aboriginal rights movement. Until the 1960s, peoples rights to live on and manage their own lands had always been overridden, in the interests of more rapid private capital accumulation in the pastoral and mining industries, and even now those rights are only acknowledged in limited spheres and are under constant pressure. Likewise, peoples right to be treated justly in the labour market were severely curtailed by the provisions of the Wards Ordinances, and the slow worker clauses in awards, which were only outlawed finally in 1968, and continued in practice for many years after this. Land and labour, two essential components of economic development, thus came cheaply in this part of the world, and their cheapness was the condition which allowed that development to occur. The education system of the time was integrally bound up with these processes and their legitimation. It has a legacy, therefore, with which it has still not come to terms, which remains a major barrier to its capacity to develop any meaningful partnership with the Aboriginal community through which a better future might be negotiated. Overcoming this is the real meaning of reconciliation in the context of the education system, rather than half-hearted attempts to make schooling practices more culturally appropriate, whatever that means. A few years ago, Profesor Basil Moore, a South African educationalist based at the time at the University of South Australia, delivered a paper to the Australian Curriculum Studies Association Conference, in which he reflected on the ways that social justice policies of government often gloss over the history that led to their adoption. In particular, these policies pay scant attention to the way the people they are meant to benefit have struggled over generations to have their rights recognised, framing these people instead as unfortunate victims, who will now become recipients of a new, more enlightened benevolence on the part of the agencies which helped to oppress them in the first place, and which they have long fought against. Lobbying, rather than altruism, Moore said, is the primary source of policy initiatives. Likewise, this lobbying has almost always been directed mainly from outside the agencies charged with implementing the new policies, yet one effect of the policies is to try to take the initiative away from these forces outside and return it to those within, many of whose staff and practices were responsible in the past for the very things which now have to change. Moore was particularly scathing about the way

5 4 white liberals in South Africa used the term disadvantaged to describe black people, quoting Eric Molobi, who had been head of the South African National Education Crisis Committee in the 1980s: Unless you openly acknowledge that black people are oppressed, then you make disadvantage or suffering seem as if it has nothing to do with the politics of power You make it sound like some terrible misfortune like cancer whose cause is a bit of a mystery And worse than that, talk about disadvantage or suffering or victims delegitimates black struggle while it legitimates white do-goodism. (Cited Moore, 1993, p.2) As Moore argues forcefully, changing the politics of power is what any meaningful educational reform is all about. This key insight has also been asserted by Aboriginal people and their organisations in every government inquiry into Aboriginal education since the 1970s 8. National and NT Aboriginal Education Policy The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy (NATSIEP) was one of the policies which Moore was discussing in the paper quoted above. Adopted by all Australian governments on 1 January, 1990, this policy is also the NT Government s current policy in Aboriginal education. Its four priority areas and twenty-one goals were said to be the distillation of the previous fifteen years of work by governments on a national basis to come to terms with Aboriginal education problems. Almost before the ink in the politicians signatures was dry, however, voices were raised about the way the policy had translated community aspirations into government initiatives which threatened to disempower the very people and organisations whose work had led to the policy s adoption. The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was concluding its investigations at this time, and it took note of these criticisms, expressing cautious support for the policy nevertheless. This caution grew specifically from submissions it received from Aboriginal organisations, including from the Institute for Aboriginal Development in Alice Springs, submissions which led the Commissioner to identify the need for an independent Aboriginal Education Advisory Committee. He also noted: The ability or desire of Aboriginal parents to become actively involved in the decision-making processes of schools is not adequately addressed in the NAEP... A policy directed at providing more structures of consultation and decision making does not, of itself, change the relationships of power and inequality which have so far alienated Aboriginal people from the education system. Specific attention must be paid to this relationship, and to devising appropriate and sensitive mechanisms for transforming it I believe that the legitimate concerns of some Aboriginal people and expressed also by Dr Coombs and others can be met by the rigorous adherence to the first long-term goal of the 8 A list of those inquiries is attached at Appendix 4. The major recommendations of a selection of these reports are summarised in Schwab (1995). Given the amount of work that has been done in Aboriginal education in the last twenty years, it is hard to understand why the NT Education Department felt the need for another review. As Mick Dodson has said in relation to RCIADIC, the problem is not knowing what people want or what needs to be done, it is implementation of these findings by the responsible agencies. Moreover, a Senate Inquiry is also currently underway specifically to examine why these recommendations have not been implemented.

6 5 NAEP.. This at least gives Aboriginal people options, allowing Aboriginal communities to decide on the type of education they want, and giving Aboriginal people an effective influence over the direction of education in this country. (RCIADIC (Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths In Custody), 1991, Vol 4, p 350). The first long-term goal to which the Royal Commissioner was referring was to increase Aboriginal involvement in educational decision-making. By the time the NATSIEP was reviewed in 1994, it was clear that the concerns that had been expressed to the Royal Commission had proven correct, and that there was a great deal of dissatisfaction within Aboriginal communities about the extent to which state and territory education systems had implemented this 9. A strategic approach to Aboriginal education, as NATSIEP acknowledged, should begin with mechanisms for increased Aboriginal control over educational decision-making. Progress on this nationally since 1990 has been extremely patchy, and has not kept pace with the growing proportion of Aboriginal students within the system. This is the case especially in the NT. Some people, including the Reviewer in his 1997 Menzies Oration, have been inclined to attribute this to the fact that an uneducated or illiterate community is unable to exercise any meaningful influence over educational decision making - or over decision making in other areas. This is true, but it can also be misleading. Peoples capacity to influence decision making may be limited by their levels of literacy, but development workers the world over deal with this problem every day, and find ways, with the help of the more literate, to involve communities in decision making about programs which affect them. The real problem is rather that neither the Commonwealth nor the NT Education Department has applied sufficient political will or resources to developing the means to increase community input. The NT Education Department will only succeed to the extent it reduces its own power and influence, something it has found it very hard to do. This should come as no surprise, since most government departments have an institutional culture which resists sharing information and power with the public. In the NT this problem is exacerbated by difficulties in recruiting and holding experienced and skilled staff, especially in remote areas, by teacher preparation which ignores the development dimension of the work required, by the large number of languages, and by a traditional hostility between government officials and those organisations such as the Land Councils, Aboriginal Medical Services, and independent education providers such as IAD and Yipirinya where there are leaders with the skills to negotiate on their communities behalf, and the resources to access independent advice and research. Comparisons with the health sector, where the responsible NT agency (Territory Health Services) has recently surrendered more of its power, are instructive. Here, it would seem that at least four additional factors have come into play. Firstly, there are many more Aboriginal community-controlled health services than there are community-controlled education facilities, and as well as their own considerable 99 This comes through clearly in the Final Report of this Inquiry (Commonwealth of Australia, 1995), and in a literature review it commissioned (Bin-Sallik, Blomeley, Flowers, & Hughes, 1994)

7 6 resources, these services also have strong national and state/territory organisations with well-developed capacities for lobbying. Secondly, the Commonwealth has been more interventionist, and has insisted on both it and the community-controlled sector having greater input in return for its funding support to the NT. Thirdly, ill-health, and therefore health service provision - is concentrated more in the Indigenous community, and the more sick you are, the more you are entitled to access health care; whereas in education, the less education you have, the less you can go on to access. Moreover, 50% of the clients competing for the available public resources in this region 10 come from the more powerful and better educated non-indigenous community, and, because of low school retention figures, this proportion goes up to nearly 70% at the higher levels of secondary education, which attract the highest levels of expenditure and the most qualified and senior teachers. In the higher education sector, which exercises considerable influence on the sectors below it, Aboriginal students form a tiny minority. Fourthly, a recognition of the central importance of primary health care, and the fact that basic qualifications for work in primary health were attainable by Aboriginal people who had very little school education, meant that Aboriginal health workers were able to institutionalise local power at the primary health care service level; whereas, in education, a basic para-professional qualification is only now being developed for Aboriginal education workers in the NT, and consequently teachers, most of whom are non-aboriginal, have retained most of the authority and power at the local service delivery level of the school. 11. For all these reasons, and many others, racism remains institutionalised within the NT education system, despite the obvious good intentions and hard work of large numbers of people who staff this system and try to make it deliver more effectively to its Indigenous students. The racism lies not in the behaviour or motivations of individuals, but in the way the benefits of education are distributed. It will continue whilever the system discriminates, as it currently does, in favour of the non-aboriginal community and its needs and aspirations, and against the Aboriginal community s needs and its aspirations. Bilingual Education The decision to abandon the bilingual education program provides an illustrative case study of some of the points made above. The literature on bilingual education suggests that it is an important way to ensure greater involvement by communities in school education, as well as being, in some circumstances, an effective means of bridging students into English literacy. However, regardless of what may be argued about its benefits, the way the NT took its decision to abandon it illustrates the exact opposite to an approach aimed at putting Aboriginal people more in control of educational decision making. Despite having a policy which made this its number one goal, and despite having in place a number of mechanisms, however limited they were, for putting this into affect, the Department of Education s review team and the Minister made a major policy change without reference to these bodies. The 10 The figures for the NT as a whole favour non-aboriginal students more. See Appendix The notable exception, where local education systems have no choice but to institutionalise Aboriginal power by employing Aboriginal people in major teaching roles, are bilingual schools. See below.

8 7 Indigenous Education Council of the NT, the body mandated under NATSIEP as the agency to which the Minister should turn for Aboriginal advice, was only consulted after the event, and a shoddy attempt - which eventually failed - was made to get it to endorse that decision. This is the kind of executive-level decision-making which is calculated to disempower the community, while it justifies itself as if it were contributing to the community s empowerment (by adopting policies to increase English literacy). At the very least, if the Minister and his advisers were convinced of the need for a change in policy, they had a duty, including under the Indigenous Education Agreement the Secretary had signed with the Commonwealth, to discuss that firstly with the IEC NT, and seek their support. They might also reasonably have been expected to consult those other affected bodies which they themselves nominated as the bodies through which they had implemented the relevant recommendation of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, such as the School Councils and ASSPA Committees of the affected schools, and the Indigenous Education Standing Committee of the NT Board of Studies. Not only should such negotiation have occurred with the people affected, but people also needed to be made aware of their rights, under international conventions to which Australia is a signatory, and under draft instruments currently before the United Nations, not to consent to the abolition of programs in their own languages. They should also have been made aware of what independent research says about the options available to communities who wish to improve English language literacy without at the same time having to surrender their rights to have bilingual programs resourced 12. It is my submission that a properly-resourced process of discussion and negotiation with the affected communities, their schools and the existing institutions established for consultation on education - a process which could and probably should have been undertaken, not by Department officials, but by the IEC NT itself - would have produced a quite different result. The fact that this was not what occurred raises serious questions about the capacity of the current NT Minister and those who formed his advisory group on this to implement their own policy (which is also national policy), not to mention national and international standards for the protection of Aboriginal peoples human rights. A Way Forward The central point is the need to increase the level of Aboriginal control over educational decision making. This will not be achieved primarily by recruiting Aboriginal people to senior positions within the NT Education department, though that will assist. The real driving force for change must come from outside the Department, from independent Aboriginal community-controlled organisations, whose primary lines of accountability are to their own communities. In this, the Review should recommend they receive independent support from the Commonwealth. Despite the differences outlined above, there are things to be learnt from the experience of the health sector. Experience there suggests that the most appropriate level from which to develop structures which institutionalise Aboriginal power over 12 This would have included the findings of the extremely well-resourced Desert Schools study, in which the NT participated (Commonwealth of Australia, 1996).

9 8 system-level decision making are neither the school nor the community, nor the Territory as a whole. Rather, the best level for developing Aboriginal power is at the regional level. The ATSIC structure should not be given this responsibility, because it does not have the expertise, though it should be included in some capacity. This lesson has already been learnt in health, where similar arguments apply. Likewise, the experience since 1991, when the Commonwealth decided to make ATSIC its major source of Indigenous advice on the implementation of its responsibilities in education to Indigenous peoples, has not been very good. If ATSIC takes part in regional education planning, as it should, this should be as one, not the only, partner. Like health services, education services have to develop within a holistic development strategy for the region. Even more than health, education impacts on and is needs to be responsive to peoples own aspirations for their future. This includes the kinds of economic development in which communities wish to take part, since this will have an influence on the kinds of education and training they wish to access. 13 No doubt, basic literacy in English will be part of most communities expectations of what their children should get from the education system. Beyond that, different communities with different language ecologies and different socio-economic and cultural aspirations will seek different outcomes. Equity, the National Review of Aboriginal Education was at pains to point out, does not mean an end to difference, the same point made by the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, when it recommended, in relation to NATSIEP, that: It be recognised that the aims of the Policy are not only to achieve equity in education for Aboriginal people but also to achieve a strengthening of Aboriginal identity, decision making and self-determination. (RCIADIC (Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths In Custody), 1991, Recommendation 299, p. 351) This recommendation was supported by the NT, and its 1995 RCIADIC Implementation Report nominated the structures and processes by which it was implementing this: School Councils, ASSPA groups and the Aboriginal Education Standing Committee of the NT Board of Studies. The thing which is most problematic about all these structures, and about the Indigenous Education Council for the NT, is their degree of dependence on the Department and its staff, and their relative lack of any strong institutionalised connections with the independent organisations which historically have played the major role in forcing change on reluctant governments. These are the relations of power to which RCIADIC and the review of Aboriginal Education directed attention. The regional planning model, by involving indigenous organisations directly, should help to overcome this, but there needs to be thought given, as the health sector has done, to independent resourcing through the Commonwealth. Once structures are in place which enable Aboriginal power to be exercised over regional Aborginal decision making, then a number of options are available in terms of programs the planning forum might consider to improve educational outcomes. These will include some things already being done in the health sector, such as better-resourced workforce strategies to train, recruit and retain specialist education 13 The detailed analysis behind this position is set out in Boughton (1998)

10 9 proffessionals for the region, while at the same time developing the teaching and educational management capacities of people within the region and community, and career structures which permit significant amounts of the work of the system to be undertaken by the people themselves. There will also be a need for the large amount of data currently being collected by the Department to be analysed and made available in ways which facilitate regional planning processes, and assist regional planning forums to make decisions about where to deploy resources, especially money which becomes available to increase services to remote communities and to develop new educational initiatives. Recent experience in Alice Springs shows that such data is rarely brought to bear on decision making, and that decisions about funding new programs are influenced too much by non-aboriginal professionals. One of the first problems on the agenda of any regional planning forum will undoubtedly be the issue of secondary education, and how to make it available on a more equitable, less discriminatory basis, i.e. to the majority of secondary-age students outside of the urban centres. For the foreseeable future, significant resources will probably need to be directed towards building community capacity to intervene more effectively in educational decision making, from the regional level down to the individual school, and in such areas as curriculum design and development. Currently, both the Commonwealth (under VEGAS) and the NT Department (under several programs, including PAT) have allocated some resources to this issue, and the IEC NT is also funded in ways which allow it to do some of this work. All these separate programs could be better coordinated at a regional level, in pursuit of clearer strategies. Experience, however, will be the main teacher, since the key to developing effective community leadership over education is experience which can only be gained by actually having the chance to make real decisions. The principle purpose of training in this area should not be to teach people how they should run schools, but rather to support them to learn to run them in whatever way they want to. The historical experience of Yipirinya School Council which has been working on this model now for two decades is an invaluable resource in this area. One of the most difficult issues is reconciliation, overcoming the legacy of past practices, which still weigh heavily on people on both sides of the racial divide as they approach the problems in education. What might this mean, in practice? At the very least, the Education Minister could provide a lead by undertaking to acknowledge and apologise for the ways that the education system has been used in the past to deny people their basic rights. To those who would claim that this is in the past, and long forgotten, or done under previous (Commonwealth) administrations, many things could be said, but the opposition to Yipirinya School Councils efforts to establish itself until the mid 1980s, the closure of Traegar park School in 1990, or the current refusal to pass on Commonwealth capital funds to the Institute for Aboriginal Development are all actions in very recent memory. More than a simple apology, however, is called for. For true reconciliation to begin on questions related to education, a properlyresourced Truth Commission able to access the historical records of government and invite testimony from witnesses to these human rights abuses provides one model. This in itself would begin the process of adult education, of both Aboriginal and non-

11 10 Aboriginal people, which is a necessary pre-condition for the development of a more just system in the future. References Bin-Sallik, M. A., Blomeley, N., Flowers, R., & Hughes, P. (1994). Review and Analysis of Literature relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education: Summary Findings Part 1: Department of Community and Aboriginal Education, UTS. Boughton, B. (1998). Alternative VET Pathways to Indigenous Development. Adelaide: N.C.V.E.R. Boughton, B. (1999). What is the connection between Aboriginal education and Aboriginal health? A critical literature review (Unpublished Discussion Paper). Alice Springs: Cooperative Research Centre for Indigenous and Tropical Health. Commonwealth of Australia. (1995). National Review of Education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. Canberra: DEETYA. Commonwealth of Australia. (1996). Desert Schools. Executive Overview. An Investigation of English Language and Literacy Among Young Aboriginal People in Seven Communities. A national Childrens literacy project, funded by the department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs under the 1993/4 Children's literacy National Projects. (Vol. 1). Canberra: DEETYA/NLLIA. Lane, J. (1984). Tuition Before rights: Aboriginal Adult Education in Australia The Aboriginal Child at School, 12(3), Moore, B. (1993). The Politics of Victim Construction in Australian Social Justice Policies. Paper presented at the Australian Curriculum Studies Association Conference, 'Curriculum in Profile'. RCIADIC (Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths In Custody). (1991). Final Report (5 vols). Canberra: AGPS. Schwab, R. G. (1995). Twenty years of policy recommendations for indigenous education: overview and research implications. CAEPR discussion paper no. 92, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. Canberra: ANU. Taylor, J., & Altman, J. C. (1998). The job still ahead : Economic costs of continuing indigenous employment disparity : a report for ATSIC. Canberra: Office of Public Affairs ATSIC for the Employment Policy Section ATSIC.

12 11 Appendix 1. The CRC The Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal and Tropical Health Northern Territory, Australia MISSION STATEMENT To provide a cross cultural framework for strategic research leading to evidence based improvements in education and health practice, to a more highly skilled health workforce, to more effective health services, and to reconciliation between Aboriginal and Western perspectives on health. SPECIAL AIM The Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal and Tropical Health uniquely has national well being as its special aim CENTRE OBJECTIVES 1. To carry out and promote research to find new knowledge that will help to improve the health of all Aboriginal people and of other people living in tropical regions; 2. To carry out and promote research, education and training leading to improved and practical means for improving Aboriginal health by means which are both feasible and effective; 3. To increase the skills of Aboriginal people, and to encourage training and employment opportunities in the field of Aboriginal and tropical health; 4. To pay particular attention to Aboriginal knowledge and rights in the commercialisation of any intellectual property identified through or arising out of the work of the centre; 5. To collect authoritative information about relevant health issues and to disseminate it to Aboriginal people and other health consumers, to service providers, to government, to the media and to the wider community; 6. To cooperate with other agencies which have similar objectives; and 7. To otherwise promote the health interests of all Aboriginal people and those other people living in the tropics.

13 12 Appendix 2. Recent relevant publications and research reports. Durnan, D., & Boughton, B. (forthcoming). VET Pathways for Indigenous Peoples in Aboriginal Community-Controlled Adult Education. Adelaide: National Centre for Vocational Education Research. Boughton, B. (1998). Alternative VET Pathways to Indigenous Development. Adelaide: N.C.V.E.R. Boughton B. & Durnan, D. (eds) (1997) Popular Education in Australia. Bulletin of Good Practice in Adult and Community Education Special Issue. Department of Adult Education, University of Technology, Sydney. Boughton, B. (1992) From Self-Direction to Self-Determination: Aboriginal Management Education in Central Australia. Paper presented to the 32 nd Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Adult and Community Education, Canberra, December. Reprinted in AAACE (1992), Adult Education for a Democratic Culture, Canberra. Pp Commonwealth of Australia (1993) Australians for Reconciliation Study Circle Kit. Researched and written under contract to the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and the Australian Association for Adult and Community Education by Bob Boughton and Deborah Durnan. AGPS, Canberra. Tranby (1994) National Curriculum Priorities in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Vocational Education and Training. National Project Report. Written and researched by Bob Boughton & Deborah Durnan. ATSIPTAC, Melbourne. Tranby (1996) Diploma of Development Studies - Aboriginal Communities. Accredited VETAB February Researched and written under contract to Tranby by Bob Boughton and Deborah Durnan. Tranby, Glebe. Unpublished papers and reports. Boughton, B. What is the connection between Aboriginal education and Aboriginal health? A critical literature review (Unpublished Discussion Paper). Alice Springs: Cooperative Research Centre for Indigenous and Tropical Health. February Boughton, B. The De-Politicisation of Aboriginal Education. The Evolution of Theory, Policy and Practice in Aboriginal Education (Unpublished Discussion Paper). Alice Springs: Cooperative Research Centre for Indigenous and Tropical Health. February 1999.

14 13 Boughton, B. Educational Inequality in the NT, and Why It is Bad for Aboriginal People s Health. Paper delivered to the Indigenous Education Council of the N.T. Indigenous Parents Education Awareness Forum, Red Centre Resort, Alice Springs, September 23 rd, Boughton, B Alice Springs, Central Australia - Sustainable Communities? A Statistical Backdrop. A presentation to Local Employment: From Rhetoric to Reality. Australian Human Resources Institute Forum, Alice Springs. August 28 th, Boughton, B Aboriginal Parental Involvement in Schools. Presentation to the Indigenous Education Council, NT Cross Sectorial Forum, Central Land Council, Alice Springs, 23 July Boughton, B. Education, health and governance: An alternative paradigm for Aboriginal education theory, research and practice. Presentation to the IAD - Batchelor College Combined Professional Development Seminar, Araluen Arts Centre, Alice Springs, 30 th June, Durnan, D. & Boughton, B. DETOUR Program Evaluation. Consultants report to Tangentyere Council, Alice Springs, February 1998.

15 14 Appendix 3. Data on Aboriginal Education in Central Australia. Aboriginal/Non-Aboriginal Percentage of Population, by Age Groups, NTG Southern Region Under 5's Age 5-19 All ages Ab'l Non-Ab'l Graph 1. Aboriginal & non-aboriginal percentages of the population in different age groups in the NT Southern region, 1997 (Source: Unpublished data from THS) Ab'l Non-Ab'l Under 5's Age All ages Table 1. Aboriginal & non-aboriginal percentages of the population in different age groups in the NT Southern region, 1997 (Source: Unpublished data from THS) Age NON-ABORIGINAL ABORIGINAL Cohort RURAL URBAN Total RURAL URBAN Total Total Table 2. Southern Region enrolments, 1998, Aboriginal & Non-Aboriginal, by age cohort.

16 15 Urban Ab'l Non Ab'l Total Number Percent Table 3. Southern region enrolments, urban area, Aboriginal & Non-Aboriginal, 1998 (Source: NTDE unpublished data) Note: Aboriginal students make up only 27% of enrolments in urban schools. Rural Ab'l Non Ab'l Total Number Percent Table 4. Southern region enrolments, rural area, Aboriginal & Non-Aboriginal (Source: NTDE unpublished data) Note: Aboriginal students make up over 90% of enrolments in rural schools. Age (n) Ab'l Non Ab'l Total Total Table 5. Total Southern region enrolments, urban & rural, by age groups, Aboriginal and non-aboriginal Age (%) Ab'l Non Ab'l Total Table 6. Percentage breakdown,, Aboriginal and non-aboriginal, southern region enrolments by age Note: Aboriginal and non-aboriginal students enrol in education in roughly equal proportions until age 15, when the proportion of Aboriginal students drops rapidly. Enrolled(%) Ab'l NonAb'l Total Op Sth NT Table 7. Percentage enrolments x Ab l/non-ab l, Southern Region & NT Note: Almost half the students enrolled in the southern region are Aboriginal, compared with less than a third for the NT as a whole.

17 16 Appendix 4. Selected Reports and Inquiries into Aboriginal Education Australia. Parliament. House of Representatives. Select Committee on Aboriginal Education. (1985). Aboriginal Education. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Miller, M. (1985). Report of the committee of review of Aboriginal employment and training programs. Canberra: AGPS. AEP (Aboriginal Education Policy) Task Force. (1988). Report of the Aboriginal Education Policy Task Force. Canberra: AGPS. RCIADIC (Royal Commission Into Aboriginal Deaths In Custody). (1991). Final Report (5 vols). Canberra: AGPS. Australia. Parliament. Senate. Standing Committee on Employment Education and Training. (1991). Come in Cinderella : the emergence of adult and community education. Parliamentary paper, no. 473 of [Canberra]: Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia. Parliament. House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs. (1992). Removing barriers to participation by urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in education, Mainly Urban. Report of the Inquiry into the needs of urban dwelling Aborginal and Torres Strait Islander People. Canberra: AGPS. pp Australia. Commonwealth. (1995). National Review of Education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People. Final Report. Canberra: AGPS. Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory. (1996). Report on the Provision of School Education Services for Remote Aboriginal Communities in the Northern Territory (27). Darwin: Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory Public Accounts Committee. MCEETYA (Ministerial Council on Employment, E., Training and Youth Affairs),. (1995). A national strategy for the education of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples Melbourne: Ministerial Council on Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Australia. Parliament. Senate. Standing Committee on Employment Education and Training. (1997). Beyond Cinderella. Towards a Learning Society. A report of the Senate Employment Education and traing References Committee. Canberra: Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. Senate References Committee on Employment (1997). Inquiry into the status of teachers.. Elliott, K. and Kable, S. (1998). Evaluation of the ASSPA Programme. Final Report. Canberra: Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.