There are two broad perspectives against which the purpose and performance of education in the region may be assessed. The first is culturally grounded and considers what Aboriginal people want from education. According to one analyst, with reference to Arnhem Land communities, many Aboriginal people selectively procure aspects of Western education and ignore others that do not suit their needs or aspirations (Schwab 1998). Consequently, what is desired from education in general, and from schools in particular, can be very different to what these western institutions expect. These desires have been conceptualised in terms of the acquisition of core competencies to deal with the non-Aboriginal world, the capacity for cultural maintenance, and access to material and social resources (Schwab 1998: 15).

The second derives from an economic development model and stresses a need to acquire the requisite skills for participation in the mainstream economy. From this perspective, educational outcomes are measured in terms of participation rates, grade progression, competency in numeracy and literacy skills, and (for the Vocational Education and Training [VET] sector), course completion. Given the need to develop a statistical profile of the regional population, the entire focus here is on this second perspective. This is not to deny that skills acquired outside of formal educational processes cannot, and may not, lead to Aboriginal participation in the regional economy in other more informal ways, for example in art and craft production and in land management. The problem for socio-economic profiling is that these more culturally grounded attributes are difficult to quantify and lack readily accessible data sources.

There is no doubt that formal schooling is seen locally as encompassing cultural education, including instruction in Murrin-Patha and, to a limited extent, other local languages. For this reason, although Thamarrurr Regional School (TRS) (formerly Our Lady of the Sacred Heart) remains administered by the Northern Territory Catholic Education Office, it has been a bilingual school since the 1970s with Murrin-Patha forming a lingua franca basis for an introduction to formal education with instruction in English gradually phased in by Year 5 as shown in Figure 5.1 (Reynolds 1994; Walsh 1990). In fact, of course, the Thamarrurr population is multi-lingual, not just bilingual. To varying degrees, aside from Murrin-Patha, five other local languages are used in the Thamarrurr region along with Aboriginal English, Australian English, Kriol, and potentially up to ten other languages from the immediate social network of Thamarrurr people ranging from Kununurra up to Bathurst Island (Walsh 1990). This complex basis for social interaction highlights the importance for TRS of stressing a cultural foundation to pedagogy.

Figure 5.1. TRS bilingual instruction distribution, pre-school to Year 7

At pre-school, virtually all instruction and activities are conducted using Murrin-Patha with only 15 minutes per day in English. The ratio of Murrin-Patha to English slowly rises with advancing school years so that by Year 4, instruction is delivered equally in both languages. This changes from Year 5 through to Year 7 with four hours per day presented in English and only one hour in Murrin-Patha, while secondary education beyond Year 7 (mostly by correspondence) is in English only. Culture days are also provided every fortnight to teach local languages other than Murrin-Patha.

The Aboriginal leadership team at TRS views the bilingual program as an essential component of educational provision in the region. Through learning Murrin-Patha cognitively, the aim is to provide a basis for competency in English. This also enables an easier exchange between Aboriginal teachers and pupils, while the infusion of local culture into the Murrin-Patha program by way of storytelling, bush activities, and contextual curricula materials ensures that students are well-grounded in the Murrin-Patha world view. One practical extension of this is a proposal to establish a Junior Rangers program linked to the Caring for Country activities of Thamarrurr Rangers. As for benchmarking learning outcomes, assessment profiles in Murrin-Patha reading, writing, and oral skills are established, although these are more to inform internal school processes regarding staffing requirements and development needs.

Participation in schooling

The TRS is the only school in the Thamarrurr region. Located at Wadeye, it offers formal schooling to Year 7. The school provides for children from pre-school age up to some secondary years, although the latter is provided mostly by correspondence. The nearest secondary school is a newly established independent one at Woolaning near Batchelor, although historically links have long been established with St John’s College in Darwin. At the time of writing, three Wadeye residents were enrolled there. Given the current size of the regional school age population (626), and its expected growth over the next 20 years to 1140 (Table 2.5), this lack of full secondary education facilities at Wadeye is anomalous when set against other Northern Territory towns with similar school age numbers.

Most outstations in the Thamarrurr region have no direct access to a school, although there is a small school at Kuy with 20 students and one teacher, while some outstations are trialling an initiative of having a local person teaching children, enhanced by irregular visits from Wadeye-based teaching staff. Some children from outstations in the east of the region attend the Nganmarriyanga (Palumpa) Community School, as well as the school at Daly River. Thus, part of the issue in terms of enrolment and attendance at TRS relates to accessibility for some outstations which are more than two hours travel time by four-wheel drive during the dry season.

Enrolments and attendance

In the first half of 2003, an average of 351 enrolments was recorded at TRS. As in previous years, these enrolments peaked (at 420) in the first month of the school year (February) and progressively declined thereafter to reach 307 by September. Thus, by September only 56 per cent of the region’s school age population was enrolled, although at the beginning of the 2003 school year this amounted to 67 per cent. While those attending school are always fewer than the numbers enrolled, the actual rate of attendance remains relatively stable over time at around 51–54 per cent. This is because attendance numbers decline in tandem with enrolment numbers. Clearly the educational impact of relatively low levels of school enrolment is compounded by low school attendance. This is shown in Figure 5.2 which charts the numbers enrolled and numbers attending. Also shown is the attendance rate for each of the school months in 2002 and the first half of 2003. Clearly, aside from the fact that not all children of school age are enrolled, and the fact that even fewer attend classes, there is also a problem of retaining those that turn up at the beginning of each school year.

Figure 5.2. TRS enrolments, attendance, and attendance rates by school month, 2002 and 2003

These shortcomings are further emphasised at the individual grade level with all grades at pre-school and primary levels having fewer than 20 students in attendance by the second half of the school year, and some (Transition and Year 7), having fewer than 10 attendees (Table 5.1). Also apparent is the fact that boys are least likely to be enrolled, and are even less likely to attend classes, with some indication from the September and previous monthly data that this gap widens with age. There are currently 10 girls completing Year 11 via correspondence, and two of these are enrolled in Northern Territory Open Education Centre (NTOEC) courses. Of particular note are those enrolments in foundation studies (Years 7–8) as this is a bridging course for children who have finished primary but are not ready for high school. A further point of note is the current low enrolment in Kardu Kigay, a special school-to-work program designed to retain senior boys (Kigay) at school. This program commenced in 1999 with funding from the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), and CDEP and aims to strengthen literacy and numeracy skills as well as self-esteem among young men (aged 16–20 years) with a history of poor school attendance.

Table 5.1. TRS enrolments and attendance by grade level and sex, September 2003

	Enrolments			Attendance
Grade level	Boys	Girls	Total	Boys	Girls	Total
Preschool	16	7	23	9	5	14
Transition	11	10	21	3	5	8
Year 1	9	14	23	6	8	14
Year 2	12	16	28	8	11	19
Year 3	9	14	23	6	6	12
Year 4	16	18	34	7	10	17
Year 5	8	15	23	5	10	15
Year 6	13	13	26	8	11	19
Year 7	6	18	24	3	5	8
F/Sa	34	30	64	14	18	32
Senior Girls	n/a	15	15	n/a	10	10
Kardu Kigay	3		3	0		0
Total	137	170	307	69	99	168

1. Foundation studies

Source: TRS, Wadeye

As for rates of enrolment and attendance by single-year age group, Table 5.2 shows these for September 2003 on the assumption that grade level directly corresponds with single year ages from pre-school at age four to secondary ages from 13–16 years. If this is so, then just over one-third of four-year-olds were enrolled in pre-school and 22 per cent of these actually attended. The peak age for enrolment appears to be among six- and seven-year-olds in Years 1 and 2 as these are the only ages at which enrolments exceed 50 per cent. They also represent the peak attendance rates, with one-third of children at these ages attending.

At the other extreme, barely one-third of secondary age children are enrolled, and only 18 per cent of this age group are actually attending school, although the rate of attendance is lowest among 12-year-olds at only 13 per cent. This reveals that the maximum exposure to education within the population occurs early at ages six and seven, but even at these ages the vast majority of children in the region are not attending school.

Some idea of the depth of non-attendance is provided by statistics collected by TRS on the duration of absences from school among those not attending. This is shown in Figure 5.3 for the 2002 school year. Clearly, there is only a very small group of regular attendees, totalling 57 in 2002, if fewer than 30 days absence in the year is adopted as the cut off. Accordingly, the vast majority (82%) of enrolled students are frequently absent from school for cumulative periods amounting to more than 50 days in the year.

Table 5.2. Estimated population-based enrolment and attendance rates by single year of age: TRS, September 2003

Single year of age	Population (1)	Enrolment (2)	Attendance (3)	Enrolment rate (%) (2/1)	Attendance rate (%) (3/1)
4	62	23	14	37.1	22.6
5	44	21	8	47.7	18.2
6	42	23	14	54.8	33.3
7	55	28	19	50.9	34.5
8	63	23	12	36.5	19.0
9	69	34	17	49.3	24.6
10	58	23	15	39.7	25.9
11	65	26	19	40.0	29.2
12	60	24	8	40.0	13.3
13–16	226	82	42	36.3	18.6

Source: Community Census and TRS, Wadeye

Retention rates

Although data are not available from which to establish grade level retention rates, a key aim of the school is to retain enrolment and attendance through to eventual employment. Success in this area is fairly limited to date with only 11 recent school leavers in mainstream employment and the rest either on CDEP or in receipt of welfare. Of course, to a large degree this reflects the nature of the local labour market with limited formal employment opportunities for relatively unskilled school leavers. However, from a labour market perspective, retention to Year 12 from Year 10 has been shown to have the greatest impact on employment prospects for Aboriginal people (ABS/CAEPR 1996; Hunter 1996), yet the numbers on Year 11 correspondence courses remain very few.

Figure 5.3. Duration of absence from school, TRS 2002

The impact of low retention is reflected in census data on the highest levels of schooling completed as reported in the 2001 Census and shown in Table 5.3 for adults (those over 15 years). According to these data, only four per cent of adults in Thamarrurr reported Year 11 or 12 completion in 2001. Converting this to a population estimate in 2003 indicates that only 41 Aboriginal adults in Thamarrurr completed school beyond Year 10. By contrast, 56 per cent (an estimated 593) reported less than Year 8 as their highest level and 16 per cent (169) indicated that they had never attended school.

Table 5.3. Highest level of schooling completed among Aboriginal residents of Thamarrurr region, 2003

	Year 8 or below	Year 9	Year 10	Year 11	Year 12	Did not go to school
% of adultsa	56.1	12.1	11.2	1.2	2.7	16.0
Estimated no.b	593	128	118	13	28	169

1. Based on 2001 Census

2. Calculated using 2001 Census-based rates against 2003 population

Source: ABS, 2001 Census and Community census