"White trash' let Aborigines down
15.11.2008

Justine Ferrari, Education writer


ABORIGINAL Australia is being let down by ``white trash'' workers in education, health, police and public services who hide in remote communities knowing they would never last in mainstream centres.
Leading indigenous educator Chris Sarra has launched a scathing attack on the standard of services provided in remote Aboriginal communities, and the failure of intervention strategies to examine the quality of services delivered.
Dr Sarra said Aboriginal people were blamed and held to account for the dysfunction in their communities but that the standard of services and the people providing them were not subject to the same scrutiny.
``We hear, `Aboriginal parents don't value education', but educators don't ask, `What have we got here that's worth valuing?','' he said.
``If we're going to talk about partnerships, we have to talk about both sides of the partnership, not just one.
``If I'm an incompetent principal of an Aboriginal school, lacking in courage to challenge parents about why their children are not attending school, it doesn't matter. Aborigines get the blame.
``If I'm an incompetent teacher filling the school day with photocopied worksheets, videos and Nintendo, it doesn't matter. Aborigines will get the blame.
``In its crudest form, remote communities are the place to tuck our white trash away.''
Dr Sarra is the head of the Indigenous Education Leadership Institute at the Queensland Institute of Technology.
As principal of Cherbourgh State School in southeast Queensland in the late 1990s, he developed the Stronger Smarter philosophy espousing a positive sense of being Aboriginal and expecting indigenous students to achieve at a comparable level to other students.
In 18 months, unexplained absenteeism fell 94per cent and real attendance grew from 63per cent to 93per cent in six years.
Dr Sarra says his success was due to challenging students to be strong, smart and act like ``Aborigines'' instead of delinquents.
Writing in The Weekend Australian today, Dr Sarra condemns suggestions to extend ``unfounded and whimsical policies'' such as those underpinning the Northern Territory intervention and the Family Responsibility
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Commission in Queensland. ``For all the huffing and puffing about mutual responsibilities, there has only been one-sided contemplation of intervention strategies to ensure `functionality' in communities,'' Dr Sarra says.
``This approach is too convenient for service providers who tuck themselves away in Aboriginal communities because they know they would never survive in mainstream centres.
``What disgusts me about these more recent approaches ... is that they never seriously call into question the roles and responsibilities of such service providers.''
Dr Sarra says service providers such as teachers and principals are paid taxpayers' money ``to be in a very important relationship with Aboriginal children and parents''.
``(They) must be challenged to reflect on their attitudes, expectations and professional behaviours and consider how these contribute to chronic non-attendance at school,'' he says.
Dr Sarra calls for the next $48million spent under the intervention to set up a services responsibilities commission to scrutinise the performance of service providers in Aboriginal communities.
His proposal follows the establishment of the FRC by the Queensland Government as part of a trial of welfare reform proposed by the Cape York Institute.
Under a trial covering the Cape communities of Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale and Mossman Gorge, the commission will have the power to decide how welfare recipients spend their money.
Triggers for a referral include three unexplained absences from school, a complaint to child safety officers or neglect of public housing.
Dr Sarra said school principals and bureaucrats already had the required authority to deal with chronic truancy and welfare or child safety issues and it was unnecessary to add an extra layer on top.
``Principals should exercise the authority they already have,'' he said. ``They should have the hard conversations with parents about their child missing school every Thursday and Friday over six years -- that's one year of school.
``They should tell the parents, `If this goes on, I can refer you to the authorities because you're in breach of the Education Act'.
``That kind of authority and process exists already and it seems bizarre to place more on top.''
Dr Sarra argues linking welfare payments to attendance makes it too easy for teachers and principals to be let off the hook for failing to do their jobs properly in providing a quality and engaging school.
``The schools we create must be places that Aboriginal children and parents can connect with,'' he says. ``They must be places in which it is OK to dream great things. They must be places that say to children, `I believe in you'.
``This is not whimsical theorising about a profession I know very little about. This is something that comes from exceptionally hard work, and an unyielding belief in the humanity of Aboriginal people.''
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