Community Involvement in Aboriginal Schools

Abstract

The following paper is based on experiences gained in schools in North East Arnhem Land. While it is likely that the situations as described are applicable to other areas, the authors do not claim that there will always be direct comparisons. Too often the wider Australian community regards Aboriginals as one people with one set of common needs whereas even limited experience soon reveals a great diversity amongst these people in terms of language, customs and environment and consequently a great diversity of needs and necessary solutions.

In schools throughout Australia the desirability of and need for community involvement become more apparent every day. To quote the Karmel report Schools in Australia,

“After almost one hundred years of public schooling a reappraisal of the relationship of the school to the wider society is taking place in Australia, as it is in most industrialized nations. The isolation of schools is being questioned as is also the idea that education should be confined to formal institutions and concentrated heavily upon those who have not yet entered employment.”

We have now reached the stage where the desirability of community involvement in education can be taken by most as a self evident truth and we can look”back in wonder at the times when such an idea was radical or not even considered.

In Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory the opportunities for involving the community in the school are probably greater than in the wider Australian society. For example, the families are easy to contact, they are generally open to suggestion and they do not have preconceived notions as to the “proper” way in which a school should be run. However, too often we have taken community involvement to mean the fund raising activities of Parents’ Committees and left the real problems of initiating genuine involvement well alone. (The activities of the School Council at Hermannsburg are a notable exception; there may be others).