Mission & Justice

14/5/10; http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/literacy-tackled-in-two-languages-20100513-v1ud.html

It is more than 2500 kilometres from Kempsey to Groote Eylandt, in the Gulf of Carpentaria, but the early childhood literacy work piloted in NSW is about to begin on the island … with one big difference.The preschoolers, aided by family and other community members, will be taught in both the Anindilyakwa language and English. Mary-Ruth Mendel, the chairwoman of the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, said the combination of speech pathology and educational understanding significantly improved children’s entry to school. ”Playing games and activities designed by [us] in the Anindilyakwa language and in English develops strong oral language skills and crucial brain development,” she said. ”These skills are essential stepping stones towards strong English reading and writing development.” The speech therapy component helped children reach an ”aha” moment, she said, when deciding whether they were listening with their ”English ears rather than their Anindilyakwa ears”. The Territory’s Department of Education has signed a three-year contract for the program. Up to 130 children will have access to it.

10/5/10

A television channel is broadcasting the first lessons in an Aboriginal language aimed at young children, in a bid to stem an alarming decline that wiped out hundreds of native dialects. “Waabiny Time,” for three to six-year-olds, teaches “yes,” “no” and other basic terms in the Noongar language, which is spoken in the southwestern region around Perth. The show, broadcast daily and repeated Saturdays, started last month with 13 half-hour episodes and proved so popular the entire series is now being screened again. “I realised while working with Aboriginal communities that kids weren’t talking with their grandparents in their language,” producer Cath Trimboli said.

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30/4/10

Mal Brough is right: there can be no progress in indigenous education without attendance (“Punish parents to save kids, says Brough”, 29/4). If any parent in any city of Australia habitually failed to ensure their child’s attendance at school, they would be fined and, if they continued to flout the law, their child would be put into foster or state care. This can’t and won’t happen in remote areas of Australia because, obviously, it would create a new stolen generation for which non-indigenous Australia would be blamed and have to apologise. Alistair Gordon, Pialba, Qld.

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Lex Hall; 29/4/10

A family-style boarding program has lifted retention rates for indigenous students to 90 per cent as Marrara Christian College battles the bleak literacy and numeracy statistics plaguing students who come from a “lost generation of parents” in remote communities. For the past 10 years the school, on the outskirts of Darwin, has run what it calls the Family Home Groups boarding program, in which indigenous students from remote communities live in the suburbs with “house parents”. Melissa Mallinson and her husband, Karl, have been house parents at the 630-student school for the past six years and are looking after nine boys, aged 12 and 13. For most of the 90 students in the program, the transition to academic life is long. “In the communities there are no boundaries. So it takes about six months before they realise they’re safe and secure. Then things start changing.”

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Stephen Lunn’ 19/11/09

Indigenous children and those living in remote areas continue to do the worst academically and have gained no ground in the past year, despite widespread recognition of their disadvantage. National literacy and numeracy data released yesterday show very little improvement between 2008 and 2009 for indigenous children, with wide gaps also remaining between children living in the cities and remote regions. The federal government’s National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy for the first time breaks down its data by indigenous status, location and parental occupation to find Aboriginal children are falling further behind in some cases. For instance, for Year 5 reading, the results for indigenous children in metropolitan, provincial and remote areas were not significantly different from 2008 to 2009, with only students in very remote regions showing improvement in that time.

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Justine Ferrari, 26/10/09

Indigenous leaders, academics and educators are angered by a lack of consultation in the development of the national school curriculum, which they argue relegates Aboriginal people and their culture to “historical artifacts”. In a letter to Education Minister Julia Gillard, obtained by The Australian, the group calls for indigenous people to be actively consulted and involved in the development of the curriculum, including a representative on the board of the National Curriculum Authority. The letter, which will be sent this week to Ms Gillard and the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, says failure to engage with indigenous people and include their perspectives in the curriculum is at odds with federal government policy, and the sentiment expressed in Kevin Rudd’s Sorry Day speech to lay claim “to a future that embraces all Australians”.

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