Developing Educational Guidance and Counselling Services for Urban Aboriginal Students

Abstract

(Readers are referred to an earlier report on this project – The Aboriginal Child at School, 4,5,1976.. Ed.)

In February 1975, Inala High School was selected as the location for a project to develop guidance and counselling services for Aboriginal students. The source of funding was the Commonwealth Department of Aboriginal Affairs. Inala was chosen because of the relatively high concentration of Aboriginal families in what is, essentially a working class district of approximately thirty thousand people. There are also significantly high proportions of migrants from non-English speaking countries and single parent families. Staffing has grown from a part-time guidance officer and and full-time Aboriginal counsellor based at the High School, to a guidance officer, a guidance counsellor, two Aboriginal education counsellors, a Secondary teacher and a teacher aide working from a centre within the community and serving all of the primary and secondary schools.

The development of the project has been guided by the philosophy of such educationalists as McConnochie (1973) that the failure of Aboriginals to succeed at school is primarily a result of factors associated with our social institutions rather than the Aboriginal child himself. McConnochie suggests that our institutions tend to debase the black child’s concept of himself and the group with whom he identifies; and it is the child’s consequent lack of self-esteem that contributes significantly to his low vocational aspirations and academic achievement. However, low vocational aspirations and achievement themselves interact, reinforcing the child’s negative self-concept and he becomes caught up in a self-sustaining cycle of increasing school failure and worthlessness.