What price an education?

Of course Indigenous students like other students from ethnic or religious backgrounds should be able to learn about their culture at school. But there is a big difference between private schools set up to cater for a religious minority – such as Jewish day schools – and publicly funded Indigenous schools. Private schools are held accountable by the parents who pay expensive fees. If the schools do not meet parent’s expectations, then they will lose enrolments and ultimately close.

When Indigenous schools like the Koori schools lose enrolments because they are not performing, the state government continues to prop them up. This sends the wrong message that it does not matter whether educational outcomes are low in Koori schools. In fact, it is almost as if the state expects Indigenous students to perform poorly.

Racist assumptions about Indigenous student’s ability have been used to rationalise the existence of separate schools for Aboriginal children. Yet it is often this very separatism that causes poor educational outcomes in the first place.

Instead of viewing poor academic performance among some Aboriginal children as an Indigenous problem, government should view it as an educational problem. As Alison Anderson, Independent MLA for the Northern Territory once said: “There is not a black way of educating a child or a white way of educating a child but a right way.”

If schools are not getting it right, then the government should stop funding them.