Mr KNIGHT - 2007-08-21
Can the minister outline some of the initiatives in Closing the Gap aimed at addressing the education and training challenges facing the Territory’s remote communities?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Daly for his question. In the government’s Closing the Gap response to the Wild/Anderson report released by the Chief Minister yesterday, education is a fundamental aspect of improving the lives of indigenous children in the bush. We all know that education is the foundation on which life’s opportunities are built. It is a sad reality that across the Northern Territory we do not have, particularly in the remote communities, attendance levels at school that we should have; we do not have the education outcomes from those schools that we should have. As the Chief Minister said, we have done much since we came to government to increase the number of teachers in the bush, building new schools and infrastructure and, for the first time, providing secondary education opportunities in our remote communities. Last year, we had 30 students graduating with an NTCE from their home community.
However, that is not enough. We need to do more, and there is $70.6m over the next five years committed in this response to build on the work that government has done to date. Picking up on what the Chief Minister said, governments can only do so much in providing facilities and teachers to teach in those schools. We want real partnerships with indigenous people, community by community, family by family, across the Northern Territory as it is those families who are responsible for getting those students into the schools.
A significant part of the additional funds will provide six additional mobile preschools, with an additional 21 teachers and assistants across the Northern Territory. Not only the Wild/Anderson report, but all contemporary thinking shows that the earlier you can engage students, and particularly preschool-aged children, into a more structured preschool setting and environment, the transition through to Transition and then to Grade 1 is going to be significantly stronger.
There are additional commitments for teachers, additional classrooms, upgrading facilities across the Northern Territory. Of course, it cannot all be done immediately at the click of a finger. We need the Commonwealth to come on board to play their part, long-term, outside of the commitments they have provided to the Northern Territory.
As the Chief Minister said, and I made a note of it, it is a good line, we need to address this challenge in the Northern Territory as a country not just as the Northern Territory. The Wild/Anderson report very explicitly states that the response required in the Northern Territory is totally outside the capacity of the Territory government as an institution in its own right to respond to. We need the Commonwealth of Australia to work with us over the next 20 years, and future governments in this parliament and the federal parliament. I do not know if any of us will be here in 15 or 20 years’ time, but we need to make a national commitment to the challenges that are placed before us in this particular report.
In terms of education, what we will be asking the Commonwealth to do is to increase the funding for English as a Second Language provision to the Northern Territory to provide an additional 42 teachers for our seven- and eight-year-olds in remote schools. There are great challenges for those kids who do not speak English as a first language, who are not immersed in their communities in English as a first language. At the moment, the Commonwealth funding formula only provides for assistance for kids at the age of six. We believe that, if we have additional assistance for six-, seven- and eight-years-old, by the time they sit the MAP test in Grade 3, they are going to have a much better opportunity of actually succeeding in reaching those levels at Grade 3 and then building on them. The further you go, the harder it is to catch up. I believe that is a legitimate request of the Commonwealth.
It is also beyond the Territory government’s capacity to provide high schools in every of the 73 communities, and there needs to be an increased effort in funding for boarding schools across the Northern Territory, and I will be taking that up with the federal minister.
There has been a significant commitment by the government in providing additional resources to build on what we already done. Partnerships with Aboriginal people are absolutely imperative in seeing sustained successful outcomes. We want to work with the Commonwealth government and for the Commonwealth government to take their share of the responsibility in supporting the implementation of this report.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Daly for his question. In the government’s Closing the Gap response to the Wild/Anderson report released by the Chief Minister yesterday, education is a fundamental aspect of improving the lives of indigenous children in the bush. We all know that education is the foundation on which life’s opportunities are built. It is a sad reality that across the Northern Territory we do not have, particularly in the remote communities, attendance levels at school that we should have; we do not have the education outcomes from those schools that we should have. As the Chief Minister said, we have done much since we came to government to increase the number of teachers in the bush, building new schools and infrastructure and, for the first time, providing secondary education opportunities in our remote communities. Last year, we had 30 students graduating with an NTCE from their home community.
However, that is not enough. We need to do more, and there is $70.6m over the next five years committed in this response to build on the work that government has done to date. Picking up on what the Chief Minister said, governments can only do so much in providing facilities and teachers to teach in those schools. We want real partnerships with indigenous people, community by community, family by family, across the Northern Territory as it is those families who are responsible for getting those students into the schools.
A significant part of the additional funds will provide six additional mobile preschools, with an additional 21 teachers and assistants across the Northern Territory. Not only the Wild/Anderson report, but all contemporary thinking shows that the earlier you can engage students, and particularly preschool-aged children, into a more structured preschool setting and environment, the transition through to Transition and then to Grade 1 is going to be significantly stronger.
There are additional commitments for teachers, additional classrooms, upgrading facilities across the Northern Territory. Of course, it cannot all be done immediately at the click of a finger. We need the Commonwealth to come on board to play their part, long-term, outside of the commitments they have provided to the Northern Territory.
As the Chief Minister said, and I made a note of it, it is a good line, we need to address this challenge in the Northern Territory as a country not just as the Northern Territory. The Wild/Anderson report very explicitly states that the response required in the Northern Territory is totally outside the capacity of the Territory government as an institution in its own right to respond to. We need the Commonwealth of Australia to work with us over the next 20 years, and future governments in this parliament and the federal parliament. I do not know if any of us will be here in 15 or 20 years’ time, but we need to make a national commitment to the challenges that are placed before us in this particular report.
In terms of education, what we will be asking the Commonwealth to do is to increase the funding for English as a Second Language provision to the Northern Territory to provide an additional 42 teachers for our seven- and eight-year-olds in remote schools. There are great challenges for those kids who do not speak English as a first language, who are not immersed in their communities in English as a first language. At the moment, the Commonwealth funding formula only provides for assistance for kids at the age of six. We believe that, if we have additional assistance for six-, seven- and eight-years-old, by the time they sit the MAP test in Grade 3, they are going to have a much better opportunity of actually succeeding in reaching those levels at Grade 3 and then building on them. The further you go, the harder it is to catch up. I believe that is a legitimate request of the Commonwealth.
It is also beyond the Territory government’s capacity to provide high schools in every of the 73 communities, and there needs to be an increased effort in funding for boarding schools across the Northern Territory, and I will be taking that up with the federal minister.
There has been a significant commitment by the government in providing additional resources to build on what we already done. Partnerships with Aboriginal people are absolutely imperative in seeing sustained successful outcomes. We want to work with the Commonwealth government and for the Commonwealth government to take their share of the responsibility in supporting the implementation of this report.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016