Bush education needs shake-up

ONE of the disappointments with the recent election campaign was the seemingly lack of priority given to education by all sides, particularly remote education, given our poor outcomes and the potential negative impact this will have on these students for the rest of their lives.

The hard truth of the matter is our country is bushed when it comes to bush education. Our most needy children are not getting the school education they need, which is their birthright as Australians. Failure and underachievement is the normal and we allow this immoral situation to continue year after year, election after election. Perhaps we would see the answer right in front of us if it were not for ideology and politics.

When I was minister responsible for these bush schools in the Northern Territory, I struggled to understand our poor outcomes in

When can we stop playing games with our children’s future?

remote schools compared to urban schools, particularly when there was so much invested. What Territory schools were doing was devised by those with far more experience in education than me: the experts.

But why were the results so damning if successive governments had followed the experts down a path with ever increasing budgets failing to turn around school results? Were the experts wrong? Were we as a society going about it the wrong way, were we really listening to Aboriginal people? Were we providing the very best educational services we could? More importantly, what could we do to turn this around?

As minister, I was ultimately responsible. Not coming from an academic background perhaps gave me an unusual advantage as I was not blinkered by the system. I certainly wasn’t driven by ideology and could perhaps use my naivety to test the experts, to ask the question: “If you guys are so right, why are we getting it so wrong?”

After doing my own research and looking at other possibilities, we came across the pedagogy of Direct Instruction and Explicit Direct

Instruction (DI and EDI) driven by Noel Pearson and the Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy in Queensland. After visiting school after school in North Queensland and seeing firsthand young Aboriginal students together with nonAboriginal students engaged in learning excited me no end.

But it also bothered me. What bothered me was the attitude towards the effective teaching that direct and ex

plicit instruction provides to students. Within mainstream educational circles, it was as if direct instruction was some type of allergy. Why? Particularly as the evidence was so clear: given the right fidelity, students were learning, in some cases at twice the rate of students using the usual teaching methods.

Imagine if these results were replicated across hundreds of regional and remote schools across Australia? Imagine the possibilities for these students ending up with an education as good if not better than urban mainstream schools? Imagine the future choices of these young Indigenous people compared with today? And imagine the generational change compared to where we are today?

I was minister when the first-year data came in from the Progressive Achievement Tests in Reading (PAT-R). These results were very exciting indeed. It showed that DI schools were progressing more than non-DI schools in the Territory. I put out a press statement acknowledging these results.

Then we lost government and my ministerial responsibilities ended. The PAT-R data have never been publicly released. Why?

Now it seems politics and ideology have intervened, and a program that was showing progress has been progressively sidelined.

What hope do bush children have if ministers have the attitude: “Why would I support an initiative championed by the last minister?” What hope for these students if we have a bureaucracy bent on supporting ideology rather than facts? What hope have these children got if we can’t put our differences aside and focus on what works?

This is not about more money folks, it’s about focusing on effective teaching and providing the long-term support to drive generational change. This is why I pushed for bipartisan support for a 10year program that didn’t chop and change with every electoral cycle and every new minister.

It is now 2020 and another change in minister, a person who will face the same challenges I did. When will we as a country, however, put difference, ideology and ego aside and focus on providing a real and tangible future for young people in the bush?

When can we focus on providing real support for a teaching system where proven results are evident? And when can we stop playing games with our children’s future and stop stealing their right to a decent education and with it any future opportunity? The answers are well known, they just need support and political will.

Government and ministers must have the courage to do more than just provide further platitudes. Australia has to stop treating bush education with motherhood statements. We need to drive generational change for our Indigenous children and their communities through effective teaching. These are Australian bush children who are not getting what should be theirs by right of birth.