By ERWIN CHLANDA
The Territory Education Department maintains statistics on racial grounds, comparing the school attendance rate of Aboriginal children with that of Non-Aboriginal children.
The difference is around 30% in favour of the latter – a margin that in most other fields would spark public outrage.
Yet in these statistics, collected for at least the past 14 years, nothing significant has changed during that time although information technology and communications have advanced dramatically, now featuring Starlink and Artificial Intelligence, and dropped in cost, and education has been eagerly experimented with.
By and large the pattern of schooling, especially in small bush communities, has progressed little from “good morning, Mrs Smith,” recited by kids of vastly different ages, abilities, needs, backgrounds and aspirations – all in the same room.
Yet technology is making it possible to group them across our vast country not by where they live but by what they have in common.
That’s an issue that keenly engages Michelle Ayres, a former bush teacher and now president of the Australian Education Union NT.
She is wondering how the $40m for “on country learning” included in the $250m from Prime Minister Albanaese last year will be spent.
“The majority of kids can’t read ‘cat’,” she says.
The student to teacher ratio is getting worse and the resources are increasingly inadequate, in a system designed in the 1800s: The male and the wealthy get a bigger slice of teaching.
Ms Ayres says the opportunity for change is as great as the need for it.
AI, used cleverly, can bridge many gaps but encouraging social relationships is equally vital. Those can occur on the sports field, the playground or in the company of old people telling stories and harvesting bush tucker.
Ms Ayres says she is not sure how much one-on-one teaching is taking place at present.
There is a lively discussion about the use of mobile phones and tablets in the classroom (the department is against them) although most kids seem to have one and are highly skilled in using them – for better and for worse.
The department’s attendance rate statistics are very detailed, under headings such as average enrolment, school, year level, remoteness and region.
For example, in the Central Region in Term 1 of 2024, the “early years” attendance rate for Aboriginal children was 59.1% and 89.3% for non-Aboriginal children.
The respective numbers for other age groups were: Primary years 61.2% vs 91.5%. Middle years 54.7% vs 78.9%. Senior years 54.8% vs 75%.
PHOTO: Yuendumu school 2021.