Fitzroy Crossing community meeting, 19 May 1999 - notes
Information about the school at Fitzroy Crossing
There are 220 primary school children at Fitzroy Crossing and 50 secondary students. 80% of the primary students at Fitzroy Crossing and 95% of the secondary students are Aboriginal. Many non-Aboriginal students are schooled outside of Fitzroy Crossing. They either board away from home or their family relocates to a larger community.
The school provides a Kindergarten to Year 12 program.
The school has 3 administrative staff and 21 teaching staff. This includes 2 pre-primary teachers. There is one English Language And Numeracy (ELAN) teacher who provides curriculum support programs for children with specific learning needs. There are 6 Aboriginal and Islander Education Workers at the school. These positions are allocated positions and the school has applied for more. The Local Aboriginal Corporation provides funding for one Aboriginal Liaison Officer.
Attached to the school is a mobile pre-primary teacher who provides a service to surrounding remote communities. One of the 6 Aboriginal Education Workers works with the mobile unit.
"We have a K-12 school with a student centred program. Student numbers limit the amount of teachers and therefore the face to face teaching. We have only 50 kids in the secondary area so that determines the staffing levels. This number varies. There are 220 kids at the primary and kindergarten levels."
"The numbers at the school are so variable. We can have 15 kids one day and 50 kids another day. The majority of children do not go through from Year 8 to 12."
"We don't have enough numbers at the secondary level to provide much of a program for the children. We have undertaken a project (Cultural Health, Fitzroy Crossing) to identify the children at primary school who may go on to secondary school and we are currently trying to support them in that. What we are finding though, is that the children who are coming up through the primary school aren't able to cope with the secondary school level of education."
Educational levels
"Secondary schooling is not meeting the needs of my child. We may have to send him to boarding school but this is very expensive and outside of our reach at the moment. We may have to relocate to a centre where there are more educational options for our children, but this is not really what we want to do. We have made a commitment to work here and we would like to stay here."
"The educational programs are pitched at the level of the kids. This means that the standard is not at the level of the masses, but there is no point in teaching kids at a level that they don't understand. These are the same issues that affect all small rural areas. If you don't have the critical numbers then you can't do the things that you want to do."
"Through technology like Telematics and video-conferencing the school can provide for different levels. If students aren't at the same level as the other students then we can provide an alternative."
"One idea has been to set up a portable at the primary school for some children so that they don't have to go to Fitzroy Crossing Secondary School and they can stay on and do their schooling. This class would be managed centrally."
Capital works
There is an urgent need for capital works for the Fitzroy school. The primary school classrooms are too small and when it rains the rain pours through the roof of the classroom. There is a need for a capital upgrade. One of the plans for the enlarged primary classrooms is to fit more than one computer in the classroom and to have a team teaching environment with information technology support. I can see we will have to wait because it took 10 years of submission writing and lobbying to get a covered basketball court.
TAFE
"We are picking up kids from the school, but we find that the kids have a very low literacy levels."
"The problem for these people is that there are plenty of courses that they want to do, but they find that they can't do them because they don't have the literacy level. As we provide accredited courses we have to make sure that they are delivered at the levels to which they are accredited. We have a system though, where we find language tutors to assist our students to meet these levels"
Aboriginal children
"I went to boarding school and I had to send my child to boarding school to get an education. Out of all of the Aboriginal kids in Western Australia there were only 3 that did the Tertiary Entrance in the State."
"Most of our kids that are high achievers are away from here, usually down in Perth. The problem when the kids go away is that they suffer a culture shock. And when they go down to Perth to do Year 12, they have to step down to do Year 11 because they can't cope with the work down there."
Indigenous issues
"We met with the Education Department the other day for 5 minutes. They put a Local Area Plan document to us and asked us to endorse it and they call this community consultation."
"The Government has produced only limited funds to put into place the 20-20 Local Area Plan. They haven't consulted with the communities. We produced our own plan for 20-20. This includes building a Secondary Campus on neutral land."
"One of the issues at Fitzroy Crossing is that there is ownership over the land by different communities. At the moment the school is on Garnuwa land. That means that for some communities the school is considered to be a Garnuwa school. Therefore they won't send their kids to secondary school because of that stigma. We need a school that is located on neutral ground with state-of-the-art teaching facilities and a satellite."
Disability
The Disability Services Commission at Fitzroy Crossing provides services to families and has a coordinating role amongst other services including the Transport Department and the Education Department. Recently, the Commission has had difficulty negotiating with the Education and Transport Departments in working towards the modification of a school bus for a child with a disability. When contacted to solve this transport problem, the Departments both passed the responsibility backwards and forwards and consequently nothing has been resolved. Some of the suggestions from the Departments have been that non-government organisations should be dealing with these transport issues.
"My daughter has a disability and she has a wheelchair. One problem we have is the modification of buses. She is getting too heavy to lift into the car (she is 14 years old). She is also unable to go on school excursions. The Education Department says that it is not their responsibility. Well whose responsibility is it? At Fitzroy Crossing we have only one modified bus and that is used every day for Aged Care. We don't have any modified taxis. I have also been trying to get my daughter into a boarding school in Perth but I have not been able to find one that can cater for her needs."
The school has been set up to cater for children with disabilities, including the modification of facilities, the employment of a full-time support teacher and the building of ramps, though they have not been able to resolve the transport problems.
The WA Education Department policy on disability is one of integration. Each child has an allocation of time; it is a fraction of a position. This includes the provision of support for children with intellectual or learning disabilities. It is the job of the integration aid to develop curriculum and programs for children in mainstream classes.
Fitzroy Crossing Secondary School has access to a psychological service that provides 3 visits to the school per term for 2 to 3 days at a time. One of the issues for the school is the level to which the child has a disability. The Department has criteria for measuring disability and will only provide support for children who fit these criteria. Part of the problem for school occurs when then children are assessed to have learning difficulties, but they do not fit the Education Department categories. The classroom teacher must provide the support for these children. Classroom teachers develop Individual Education Programs for children not eligible for classroom support.
One of the most common disabilities for children at Fitzroy Crossing is otitis media. Staff at the school claim that the Department does not acknowledge this as a disability and therefore does not resource the school to provide support for these children.
"My daughter has had otitis media since pre-primary. This has had a vast impact on her learning. I have had to struggle with this problem. There is nothing in the classroom to deal with this problem. There are long waiting lists for the specialists to see my daughter and meanwhile her education is suffering. There are many children in remote regions with the same problems and these problems are not being addressed."
"The problem with otitis media is that the hearing levels are always fluctuating. The hearing might be satisfactory one month and poor the next. It is so difficult to cater for the needs of children with these problems and it is affecting their learning. They do have operations to replace the eardrums, but when they are done before the age of 10 they break down and the kids are back on the waiting list for another operation. This makes the kids and the parents very upset. The children have to go 400 kilometres away and the bus comes back to Fitzroy Crossing at 1.30 in the morning. Isolated Patients Transport Assistance Scheme does provide for a parent to accompany the child to the place of the operation, but this is not always possible when the mother has a new baby."
"Otitis media has more serious implications for children who have a language background of Kriol and Walmajarri as their first languages. Given that they are required to become proficient in English, some of these children hardly hear any English at all. At the school where I teach, we have only just got road access to Fitzroy Crossing, and we have just got a TV as of 3 weeks ago. Before that, I was the only English speaker in the community. Many of the children have otitis media and their English language education is seriously compromised because of the combination of language factors and the hearing difficulties. Something like 90% of the kids at my school have otitis media."
"We have Listen Plus at our school, but regardless of whether the sound is amplified, the sound is still a muffle. If you have eardrum damage, it is like having your fingers in your ears."
"The incidence of otitis media today in Fitzroy is less due to cleaner water and better nutrition and housing and greater access to community health. It is certainly better than it was 10 years ago."
English as a Second Language (ESL)
"The fact that most of the children that we teach have ESL is not recognised here at Fitzroy and it is not resourced. In Perth, children who speak ESL have access to language resources. Here, the ESL issues are not acknowledged."
"Immigrant children receive English language training and they are often literate in another language. The Aboriginal children here are not literate in their own language. The Department does not recognise this. To have 30 kids in the one class, given these issues, is just unworkable. In Kununurra, a trial was conducted where they had 10 kids to 1 teacher. The improvement in literacy levels was remarkable. The teacher-pupil ratio is crucial in the success of language learning programs."
"The Aboriginal Liaison Unit has made representations to the Education Department in relation to this issue. We know that there is money available but it is only for a short period of time, it is only for one year and while this suits immigrant students who are literate in their own language it does not suit our children."
Language learning
"At Fitzroy Crossing we have 4 different language groups. Each receives one hour of LOTE per week. As you can imagine. This is a complex process involving pulling children out of classes at different times. It takes a lot of time and resources to build up the program for the languages. Currently the LOTE programs run up until Year 10."
"Linguists will tell you that language is dying in areas such as Fitzroy that is why it is so important that it be taught in the schools. Language is not just about learning Walmajarri; it is also about culture."
Literacy/language strategies
"We have found some difficulty with the changing literacy strategies. Once it was the "Phonic" approach and then it was the "Whole Word" approach. In a small remote school where you have teachers changing all the time, the principal changing and changes to the language program you find that there is a real lack of continuity for the kids."
School retention rates
"One of the reasons that adolescents don't stay at school is because there are no jobs. You also have adolescent girls leaving school to have babies. But you find that some of these young people go back to TAFE after a period away from school. I think we have to change the way we think about school from being K-12 to being more like life-long learning. We need to look beyond the Western model. Similarly, the Western outcomes might not cater for the children in this area. Yet through the accreditation process we are bound by the Western models."
Education, training and employment programs
Residents of Fitzroy Crossing set up the Fitzroy Valley Education and Training Committee to investigate the education and training needs of 12 to 22 year old Aboriginal young people. The Committee obtained funding to establish the employment options for the young people and to match employment with training. Positions have been identified through the local Aboriginal Corporation (Leedal) at the both the community owned supermarket and 50% owned hotel. The project intention is to train students for these identified employment positions. The employment education and training project has set a target to have 30 trainees and 30 jobs by the year 2003.
There are currently 3 students on traineeships, working 2 days per week and engaging in post-compulsory studies. The principal of post compulsory studies (based at the school) is concerned for the funding of the program since the various government departments measure success in terms of numbers.
Wulungarra Community School
The Wulungarra School has 30 students though the numbers can fluctuate when the families are away from the camp. The school is situated at Kadjina. There is one teacher at the school and she is also the principal. She is the only English speaker in the community. The Kadjina community is 4-5 hours by road from Fitzroy Crossing. During the wet season the road is unusable.
"Wulungarra Community School obtains funding from the Isolated Children Education Program, directly from the Commonwealth. We are an independent school so most of our money comes directly from DETYA. We have been able to develop materials with the children in their languages as well as English. This means that the students are very aware of what is Kriol, what is Walmajarri and what is English."
"The two resources Felix and Making the Jump brought out by the Catholic Education Office have made a huge change to the ways in which teachers perceive Kriol and other Aboriginal languages. At the Wulungarra Community School we have found the CD-Rom Learning Walmajarri also from Catholic Education to be an excellent resource. This language is documented now, so it makes it easier to teach."
"Education is not an entity unto itself, it sits in a broad context. At Wulungarra we have had road access for only 2 weeks this year. At one point our community ran out of food and this was at a time when our airstrip was not operational. The only food that we had was lentils. We have had power and water problems. We do our best to teach but there are difficulties with essential services. Sometimes you can have committed staff and good programs but other factors can intervene. These factors can really compromise the community's health and viability."
"There is a community about half an hour away from Wulungarra called Nullabida or Kullabi and it has no educational offerings for the children. When families from these communities are visiting Wulungarra the numbers of school students can double. In the 6 years that I have been around I have observed that there are numbers of children from these communities and others who have no access to education."
"They approached (Ms) Yangkana Laurel last year and we have had a few meetings with them, but there are problems with transport and no one is taking responsibility for this problem. The children sometimes come to us and sometimes they go to another school. If this was a group of 20 white middle class children this lack of educational access would never happen. We have approached the Transport Authority but apparently they have out-sourced all this sort of travel. Therefore it is not going to be a financially viable enterprise for a private company to bus children from Ngalapita to Wulungarra School every day. We haven't come to a satisfactory arrangement yet."
"The other problem for us is that our funding is linked to the census numbers and I think there is an assumption that if children are not at school on a certain day that they are at another school. This is not the case. There are large numbers of students who are not accessing any education. This would be the situation for lots of remote communities around Fitzroy."
"Isolation is another problem for us. In order to come to this meeting we had to fly here. If we have a broken tap we have to fly somebody out. All of this costs money and constitutes a huge amount of our expenses. So even though Fitzroy Crossing is considered to be a remote school and does have issues that no city school would have, there are also differences in remoteness between Fitzroy and a community like us."
Walkajungka School
Walkajungka School is situated outside Fitzroy Crossing. It has 6 non-Aboriginal teachers and 5 Aboriginal & Islander Education Workers. There are 80 to 100 kids at the school. The school caters for children from primary through until Year 10 secondary school. The school has a language program of English, Walmajarri and Walkajungka.
Some children come to school from stations outside of the communities. The children who travel the furthest spend about 1 to 1 hours each day on the school bus.
Most children leave school before Year 10. The boys leave school early and are very unlikely to continue beyond Year 9.
Early childhood
Family and Community Services WA is establishing a childcare centre in Fitzroy Crossing. There are 20 4-year-olds on the books at the moment with 15 children in regular attendance.
Last updated 2 December 2001.
