The remote community education scandal in the NT

                                                            That glib and oily art

to speak and purpose not.

King Lear, Act one, scene one.

 

The Weekend Australian (23-24 September 2023) has begun publishing a series of articles (link here and link here $$) researched and written by three independent journalists and has also published an editorial titled NT schools worsen disadvantage (link here $$). The front page article is accurately titled Nation’s forgotten schoolkids scandal, and the back up article is titled Thirst for learning in education desert.

 

 The articles describe appalling conditions in makeshift classrooms in remote outstations, endemic shortfalls of registered teachers, and quite atrocious educational outcomes. The article also points out that large numbers of Indigenous students fall below established minimum standards and attendance rates are extraordinarily low. The NT Education web page (link here) provides a good overview of the extraordinarily poor attendance levels particularly in very remote regions. What those figures do not tell us is the proportion of students who are attending 90 percent of the time. For example, fifty percent attendance may mean that every student is attending only half the days in the school year, or that fifty percent are attending every day, and fifty percent none. The devil is in the detail. In any case, those outcomes scandalous in their own right, a ‘scandal’ informed observers have been aware of for decades (link here), and a ‘scandal’ the NT Government has been aware of and has done nothing substantive to address. Of course, the real scandal is that these outcomes are scandalous, but not a scandal that forces government action.

 

 The ‘scandal’ The Australian article authors point to are the funding mechanisms in place in the NT education system for remote schools. In particular, they point out that the NT is the only jurisdiction that funds schools on the basis of attendance numbers, and not enrolment numbers.

 

 According to The Australian articles, following a 2022 Deloitte Report that identified the harm arising from this system, the NT Government announced it will move to an enrolment based system over the next five years, but the NT Minister would not answer the authors questions on the current status of this transition. The result is a massive level of underfunding, estimated at $214m, that impacts on the most disadvantaged students in the nation.

 

 The second funding mechanism that is defective, and according to the article directly affects an estimated 400 remote students, relates to so called Homeland Learning Centres, that are in effect classrooms notionally attached to a hub school. The article states:

There is no public record of HLC student numbers, teaching ratios, educational outcomes, facilities or funding.

 It is not clear if the hub schools incorporate these statistics or not. A 2014 Review commissioned by the NT Government and cited by the article raised “issues about equity and quality in the delivery of education for all NT students” and suggested that hundreds of Indigenous students lived in homelands with no education provision at all.

 

 A third issue, raised by the Australian Education Union NT (AEUNT) was that education funding required on the ground is instead directed into the NT bureaucracy. According to Productivity Commission data compiled by the AEUNT, the NT has 22 non-school staff per 1000 students compared with nine in the ACT and eight in Tasmania.

 

 The Australian’s editorial includes the following assessment, with which I would agree:

The situation is unconscionable and suggests the NT government is not fit for purpose. The indifference, warped priorities and maladministration that have created the problems stretch back for decades across the political divide.

 

 So what are we to make of all this in policy terms?

 

 At the risk of gross simplification, and bearing in mind that remote NT is not the same as remote Victoria, it is worth assessing this from two perspectives, a micro community level perspective; and the macro jurisdiction wide perspective.

 

 At the micro level, the provision of education services by the public sector is just one element in a labyrinthine intercultural world, where community priorities are shaped by the seasons, the geography, cultural responsibilities, localised conflicts and alliances, family obligations, and the obligations and opportunities across multiple sectors emanating from mainstream institutions. To use a gross over-simplification, it is a complex micro policy environment. Mainstream values and assumptions are not guaranteed to operate as they might in Melbourne. Nor do local communities necessarily punish a government that does not provide services (particularly when all governments effectively treat them the same); instead, bush community members may take the view that voting is irrational and not a priority (link here).

 

 At the macro policy level, mainstream policy engagement is shaped overwhelmingly by political pressures and opportunities, with Cabinet and Ministers making zero sum decisions regarding the allocation of resources, both in terms of what is available to a particular sector (like education) and then where the finite and perhaps insufficient resources are allocated, making zero sum decisions within the sector, funding some schools more than others. If for example urban infrastructure is the paramount priority in a polity with small electorates, and where winning margins are razor thin, politicians and governments will be strongly incentivised to put electoral considerations above fairness, above long term investments with payoffs in the future, and above the interests of particular groups of citizens, above the public interest, and above the national interest.

 

 The funding available to a particular school, and its associated homeland learning centres, is a function of factors operating at both micro levels and macro levels. Governments are adept at finding bureaucratic processes (that is, systemic institutional processes) to allocate resources which deliver the outcomes desired by the political agenda of the government while appearing to be neutral and fair. The use of attendance rather than enrolment to allocate school resources across the NT is a prime example of this. It is not a policy mistake or oversight, but a deliberately chosen policy mechanism designed to deliver political outcomes while appearing anodyne and even appropriate. Other strategies adopted by governments include deliberate reliance on opacity or overt confidentiality, prioritising secrecy over openness. The articles in The Australian mention a number of times various reports that have been commissioned and not released, and information that is not available or not even collected. Transparency is the friend of the public interest and good policy, not its enemy (as governments implicitly argue).

 

 The educational outcomes at a particular school, and aggregative across the sector, are a function in large measure of funding availability, but also a function of other factors at both micro and macro levels. This is widely recognised by all participants in the sector, but paradoxically, it becomes a further reason for governments to rely on under-investment as a political strategy as outcome failure can always be blamed on something else (e.g. poor parental commitment, poor teacher skills, remoteness and poor roads, the weather, welfare dependence and so on). Yet while adequate funding is not in itself sufficient to guarantee good educational outcomes, it is certainly necessary (that is, essential) for good educational outcomes. Other factors that are essential include  effective alignment between the curriculum and approach to instruction and the cultural values of the school community; safe and secure housing; social stability within the community (including protection from alcohol related violence; and of course access to good health services. There may well be others such as effective community governance, and perhaps access to sport and recreation facilities, access to traditional country, and so on.

 

 In other words, if we as a nation wish to ensure that remote Indigenous communities are able to access an effective education system, we need to adopt a more holistic policy approach that is both culturally aligned and which priorities the community interest over short term political interests. This may sound somewhat naïve and idealistic when written in abstract prose, but it needs to be remembered that politicians are making decisions that are affecting adversely the life opportunities of tens of thousands of children and adolescents over the course of any decade. Those decisions are, in a very real sense, shaping and determining future life paths: prison or employment, alcohol or sobriety, sickness or health, long life or early death.

 

 If this all sounds too hard, I beg to differ. It is certainly complex, difficult and challenging. But there are people in the NT, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, who in the face of the widespread political indifference and obstruction outlined in The Australian article, are giving it their best shot. I refer readers to the Karrkad Kanjdji Trust (KKT) (link here) which is primarily an organisation established to care for country. It has apparently taken the view that education is too important for its members and their children to be left to the NT education system’s under-performance. They established and supported an associated entity, the Nawarddeken Academy (NA) which now operates three schools in western Arnhem Land. Their 2021 Annual Report (link here) outlines in detail what they are seeking to do. I do not have first hand knowledge of their educational approach and strategies, but what is available in their documentation strikes me as a significant step in the right direction. The fact that there are people working hard in the face of the political and bureaucratic indifference outlined in The Australian’s article is to my mind inspiring.

 

 I am however very conscious that micro success in delivering education programs (if achieved) is not the whole solution. It needs to be replicated across the whole sector. It may well be that the talents and commitment of the intercultural teams at KKT and NA are not widely available even if funding were to be made adequate and other ancillary requirements provided. Macro policy is, in this respect, more difficult than micro policy. This leads me to conclude that there is a need to focus on making macro policy settings effective and fit for purpose.

 

 In a recent submission to the Productivity Commission in relation to their draft report on the review of the operations of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap (link here to a my post on this issue – click through to my submission), I argued that the current closing the gap policy architecture was sub-optimal and used the absence of a target which directly monitors the effectiveness of school education as an example. I cited Productivity Commission research that links poor education outcomes to continuing deep disadvantage. I also argued strongly that the Commonwealth should step up and take an oversight role in relation to the performance of the states and territories on closing the gap. Importantly, I argued that the Productivity Commission should make the case for a more effective policy architecture, an approach that I hadn’t discerned in its draft report.

 

 It struck me that the Productivity Commission should be using its status as an independent expert body to provide potential solutions to the deep-seated inequities confronting First Nations citizens. The Australian exposé just reinforces the argument that the Productivity Commission, and indeed, the Commonwealth, must look beyond the strict terms of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap if they wish to see real progress in the next thirty years.

 

 In relation to the NT education system, it seems obvious to me (and increasingly others) that the NT Government has neither the political incentives, nor the policy capabilities to deliver adequate education services to remote communities. The Australian’s editorial suggested that elements of the NT education system be handed over to ‘an experienced non-government education service.’ I don’t support this idea as any such non-government entity would be at risk of direct or indirect  interference and pressure by electorally (and not policy) motivated NT politicians.

 

 It is time that the Commonwealth accepted that the NT Government is incapable of delivering remote education in a manner consistent with the public and national interest, and in such a way that it actually delivers outcomes. These poor outcomes are feeding directly into the social dysfunction that is endemic in parts of remote Australia, and which I have previously argued is a slow burn catastrophe (link here). I suggest that what is required is a joint Commonwealth and Territory Authority, inclusive of Indigenous representation and interests, to oversight the allocation of funding resources and development of policy for the delivery of education across the Norther Territory outside of Darwin and perhaps Alice Springs.

 

Such an Authority should be established by Commonwealth legislation, and should have a finite term, say twenty years. The Commonwealth should fund the authority, and adjust the existing funding to the NT if it so wishes to effectively ensure joint funding. There may also be merit in considering whether such an authority should be extended to remote regions in other jurisdictions. The 1967 referendum provided the Commonwealth with the legislative remit in relation to Indigenous matters in the states and territories (as does section 122 of the Constitution in relation to the Territories). The Commonwealth Government should fulfill its responsibility to the citizens of the NT who are being systemically deprived of the opportunity for an education, and the life opportunities that flow from that by the longstanding policy decisions of the NT Government.