The Northern Territory's two biggest land councils have joined a call for the urgent scrapping of a controversial education funding policy which they say is widening the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children.
Key points:
- The Northern and Central Land Councils have called for the effective enrolment policy to be immediately scrapped
- The CLC is calling for more accountability around education spending
- It says a Voice to Parliament could help achieve that
The Northern and Central Land Councils — the two biggest representative bodies for Aboriginal people in the NT — have claimed the NT government's "effective enrolment" funding policy leads to inequity in the delivery of education to students in remote Aboriginal communities.
The policy funds schools based primarily on attendance, rather than enrolment, with advocates saying it has resulted in a remote education funding "crisis" as repeated budget cuts lead to plummeting attendance rates.
"Closing the gap starts with education, and remote families want quality education delivered in their home communities," Central Land Council (CLC) general manager Josie Douglas said.
"This policy is effectively starving remote community schools of much needed funding to assist the most disadvantaged students in the Northern Territory."
NT Education Minister Eva Lawler committed to scrapping the funding model late last year within a two-to-five-year period, in accordance with recommendations from a government-commissioned review.
But the land councils have now echoed previous calls from the education union for swifter action.
"Equity in the supply of education should be held as a basic expectation for remote residents. It is clear this is currently not the case for many locations," Northern Land Council (NLC) chief executive Joe Martin-Jard said.
"Rectifying the inequities in the current system should be a swift process.
"The current funding models affect closing the gap efforts in the remote NT."
On the ground in Borroloola, a large mostly-Aboriginal community in the Northern Land Council's region, recently retired teacher Daphne Mawson said the inequality is stark.
"In town schools, they have science teachers they have maths teachers, there's proper librarians ... we don't have that out here," she said.
"It goes goes down to simple things like educational excursions — it doesn't happen out here."
Calls for 'systematic reform'
The federal government earlier this year announced $40 million in funding for Central Australian schools as a part of a $250 million anti-crime package.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said this would bring all Central Australian schools to their full funding level next year, while NT schools on average remain "the most underfunded schools in the country".
Ms Douglas said while the funding package was "very welcome", the Central Land Council was calling for "structural and systematic reform".
"We have been making submissions about education for many, many years. This is not new," she said.
"It is not good enough for [Minister Lawler] to say we have a timeline to transition out of the disastrous effective enrolment policy.
"This policy needs to stop immediately."
Ms Lawler late last month said effective enrolment was set to remain in place until 2025, which is inline with the timeline set out in the review.
She said she has been advocating for more funding from the federal government in upcoming negotiations to enable a transition to an enrolment-based model.
Voice to Parliament could improve accountability
Ms Douglas said there was a lack of transparency around how government funding is spent in Aboriginal communities.
"From the funding being provided by the Australian government to the Northern Territory, it is hard to know how much remote schools are being underfunded," she said.
She said a Voice to Parliament would "facilitate" greater accountability.
"At the moment, the conversation between the Australian government and the Northern Territory government is missing an important piece," she said.
"And that piece is local voices local knowledge in terms of what is needed for remote school education."
In a statement, Mr Clare said improving transparency and accountability around government education spending was a focus of a current review by an expert panel.
"It will provide advice on the specific reforms that should be tied to funding in the next National School Reform Agreement," he said.
The report will be handed to all education ministers at the end of this month.