How bilingual education succeeded in a remote indigenous community - from ABC News

In bushland near the school in Yirrkala community in north-east Arnhem Land, students gather around smouldering coals covered by smoking bark and leaves.

They're participating in the cultural curriculum called Galtha Rom, or cultural lessons, as part of the students' "both ways" bilingual studies at the school, which have become a model for remote Indigenous learning.

"We're very strong in our culture here in north-east Arnhem Land, in our culture, in our language, in our law," said Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs, co-principal and director of Yolngu education at Yirrkala School.

"We here at Yirrkala have the power to bring these children anywhere and everywhere.

"Our motto is, our children can achieve anything."

For almost 50 years, Yolngu people in Yirrkala, 900 kilometres east of Darwin, have insisted on having a say in how their children are educated, often defying shifting government policies.

In 2009, the Northern Territory government ordered the Territory's remote schools to teach English for the first four hours of the day — even though English is not the first language of most remote Aboriginal students.

The Yirrkala school ignored the order and continued its "both ways" approach with a focus on bilingual education, where a child's first language is taught alongside English.

Yielding positive results

Last year, eight students from the school became the first in their community to graduate year 12 with university entry-level scores, with plans for careers in medicine, teaching and the arts.

Teachers say the "both ways" approach is the most effective way to educate children from remote Aboriginal schools where, over decades, many have dropped out years before reaching year 12.

The approach includes learning in both the classroom and from elders on traditional lands.

Dan Yore, the Yirrkala school's senior secondary teacher, said: "Local people know what will work for their kids, whether it's in education or health, and it's about deeply listening to that and putting the resources into that, and allowing those things to happen."

Mr Yore said Western teachers like him were encouraged to come out to remote communities but he said: "It comes down to the local (Aboriginal) teachers, they're the ones that make the difference here."

At the school's literature production centre, books, videos, flash cards and apps are developed in the local language, Yolngu Matha.

It's one of only a few school-based literature production centres operating across Australia.

"Most students coming into the school have very limited experience in speaking English and even more limited experience in literacy in English," said Katrina Hudson, the school's co-principal.

"So we start with 90 per cent of the teaching content being delivered in first language."

"English-speaking children go to school speaking English and straight away they get to learn in English, they get to encounter curriculum and interact with teachers in English," she said.

"Kids here come to school with a really rich language that needs to be valued so that the kids can learn at an appropriate age.

"They need to continue their learning through first language and (also) learn English."

Yalmay Marika Yunupingu, a teacher-linguist at the school, said: "We don't want language to be lost. Some people have lost their language. And it's sad and we don't want to be a lost generation."

Returning power to Aboriginal communities 

Educators are looking to Yirrkala School and its sister Laynhapuy Homelands School as a model for learning on traditional homelands, as well as in remote communities.

Gapaya (Liam) Mununggurr graduated last year from the Laynhapuy Homelands School at the outstation Garrthalala, a few hours' drive from Yirrkala, and is studying to become a teacher at an Adelaide university.

"I chose to be a qualified teacher so I can educate Yolngu children both in the English way and Yolngu way so they can balance the world," he said.

A decade after the Territory government issued the order for English to dominate remote teaching, Lauren Moss, the current NT Education Minister, said: "Bilingual education is continuing to come up as a really strong priority for communities, and I think we have to listen to that."

A key policy of her government, which came into office in 2016, is to return power to remote Aboriginal communities through local decision-making agreements, including in education.

The government has so far signed agreements with a handful of communities.

But for years, educators in remote communities have been concerned about the differences in federal and Territory government funding models for remote schools.

While the Commonwealth provides funding to the Northern Territory government for schools based on student enrolment, the Northern Territory distributes those funds based on student attendance. 

Critics say the funding model has unfairly disadvantaged remote schools where attendance levels hover around 50 per cent.

Dr Bill Fogarty, deputy director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University, said funding based on school attendance made it increasingly difficult for small remote schools to resource strategies to improve student engagement.

"The idea that you only fund schools that have poor attendance more poorly, that you fund them less is absolutely ridiculous, because what you're doing is perpetuating the problem that you're trying to fix," he said.

Ms Moss said her government was reviewing the policy, "particularly how it's working for our small schools, the vast majority of which are remote". 

"I don't think there's going to be a model absolutely perfect for everyone but I do think there is some shifting we can do within the existing model to make sure we're better supporting students," she said.

Kenisha Winunguj, the dux of Yirrkala's school last year and one of the eight students who graduated year 12, says she plans to be a doctor, following in the footsteps of her grandmother, mother and aunty, who trained to be health workers.

"I look up to them and wanted to help people," she said.

Ms Winunguj said her advice to students learning at Yirrkala was: "Never think they are not good enough to take a big step when they graduate". 

"I want them to be strong and go for what they want," she said.

This reporting was funded by the Walkley Public Fund