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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (4 March) . . Page.. 484 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The Indigenous Education Compact states the commitment of both Indigenous families and the department to working together to overcome inequities and improve the experience of schooling and outcomes for Indigenous students. The wording has been agreed to by the Indigenous Education Consultative Body and the department. Support of Indigenous parents for the Compact is being sought.

The IECB has requested that the Indigenous Compact be provided to parents for comment before being released.

I think the compact may have been launched after that. I am not clear on the timeframe. Maybe the minister can get back to me on that later if she needs to take that matter on notice.

The whole question of working with families is stated and understood by everybody. A holistic approach has to be taken to improving the lot of Aboriginal people in the ACT. I mention that again. It has come up in my Health Committee. People working in the field consistently say that you have to recognise health as the World Health Organisation recognises it-in a holistic sense, which includes taking into account not just physical health but support for Aboriginal people in education, housing and so on.

Relevant to this discussion is the linking of all the sectors when we are working on improving the educational outcomes for Aboriginal children. Once again, that is about linking with families, but it is also about linking with other services that may be supporting families, and it is most definitely about finding out from people themselves what needs to happen to improve their physical health, educational outcomes and so on.

I have another question which I am also happy for the minister to take on notice. From memory, the indigenous educational unit changed in 1998. It moved to Mawson. There have definitely been improvements in the focus on indigenous education since that time. But when the unit moved to Mawson I understand that the workload for indigenous education workers trebled. There were advantages, in that they had wider contact with the community because they were working across more schools, whereas before they worked in a small number of schools with a limited number of kids.

There are pluses and minuses for both systems, but the minus for the current one is that there are so many kids. I am interested to know what the caseload is for those workers so that I can try to understand whether it is workable. I would be interested in the government giving me an analysis of that.

It is about working with other agencies-not just government agencies but agencies in the community sector. Gugan Gulwan, for example, has a lot of insights into what is going on for young people in mainstream schools. It is also about recognising the importance of creative responses to the situation. If you have children in mainstream schools, whether they are indigenous or non-indigenous does not matter. It is important to understand how fantastic creative ideas can come from the community and from the bureaucracy. It is also important to be prepared to take some risks in progressing innovative ideas and trying things. If they do not work, that is okay. We give it a go. If we do not do that, there is a danger that we will be safe but sorry.

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