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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (24 May) . . Page.. 1679 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

Indigenous education, as Mr Berry mentioned-and he is quite right-is of real concern not only here but Australia-wide. I acknowledge, as does the government -and I am sure I speak for my Commonwealth and state colleagues-that there is a real need to put workable strategies in place to ensure that educational outcomes for our indigenous students improve. Members of the Assembly should be concerned not so much about a story that is now two years old, not so much about the selective reporting supposedly of the performance of the department and, through it, the government, but about what we need to do now and the bigger, broader issues of indigenous education.

I put it to members that this government, unlike its predecessor, has put in place policies that have led to real progress. More needs to be done, but we have seen real progress. For example, in 1999 there were a number of new initiatives. Firstly, the Indigenous Education Consultative Body has been expanded to provide a broad range of advice to government, and I am very pleased with the frank advice that comes from that body. The Indigenous Education Unit has been revamped in two important ways. The unit leader position has been upgraded to a deputy principal position, and an indigenous person has been appointed to lead the unit. Chris Harris, as members might recall, was deputy principal of Campbell High School. He is a most impressive person doing an excellent job.

The indigenous workers on the team are now working with all indigenous students and their teachers to produce individual education plans, something that certainly was not happening in 1998. New, improved data collection and reporting procedures were negotiated with all the responsible agencies within the Department of Education and Community Services. The literacy and numeracy testing which has been put in place for years 3, 5, 7 and 9 now provides very valuable data on student performance. I have asked my department to provide me with a detailed strategy on how we can best use that data to improve educational outcomes for our indigenous students, and at present the department is working on an additional strategy to address the literacy and numeracy needs of indigenous students. I am not satisfied with results to date. I want to see them improve. I would be surprised if all members did not want them to improve, and the government wants to see them improve.

The main thrust of the strategy is to build up a commitment that schools have the responsibility to use test results to identify individual indigenous students destined to become illiterate without intervention. The schools then need to develop education programs for those students. I get back to the individual plans. The purpose of those programs is to achieve improved results, and we will see those improved results in a two-year period, as we did with writing between year 3 in 1997 and year 5 in 1999. Writing was identified as a weakness, and we saw an improvement there.

There are three parts to our strategy, with the first two supporting the third. Those three parts are, firstly, an awareness and acceptance that there is a need to change; secondly, a better targeting of resources to support school individual indigenous education programs for indigenous students; and, finally, schools making an explicit commitment in their school literacy plans to adopt this approach. The department now has the data collecting mechanisms to ensure success. As well as this, resources are already provided through learning assistance, English as a second language, and federal funds for this purpose.

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