Improving literacy of Aboriginal students

Noel Pearson and Professor Kevin Wheldall

Following their visit to the Cape York township of Coen last October, Professor Kevin Wheldall and Robyn Beaman of the Macquarie University Special Education Centre (MUSEC) are hoping to establish a tutorial centre to improve the literacy of Aboriginal students.

Wheldall visited Coen upon the invitation of Noel Pearson, Director of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership. Pearson has high aspirations for his people and is dissatisfied with the state of Aboriginal education.

“Noel feels that the emphasis on culturally appropriate education for aboriginal people has taken attention away from the main game, which is education,” explains Wheldall.

The township of Coen is about 500 kilometres from Cairns via dirt road. This remote community of 400 people boasts a pub, boarding house, post office, petrol station, general store and a school.

“Coen is incredibly remote but it is also part of the global village,” Wheldall says. “They have kids like kids everywhere, they are watching The Simpsons on television, and are very much connected. There is no reason why they shouldn’t be doing as well as other kids.”

The primary school, which teaches students from Kindergarten to Year 7, is operating like any regular school according to Wheldall. Unfortunately the thought remains that the Basic Skills Test is something that Aboriginal students won’t do well at, as it is culturally inappropriate.

“I think the problem is that we have been focusing on Aboriginal education rather than education for Aboriginal people,” says Wheldall. “We are all human beings. We all learn the same way through the same basic processes. The culturally appropriate education movement is so dominant so to think outside the square is very hard.”

While Wheldall felt that the kids reading levels were okay, he asserts that they could be doing much better. The plan is to establish a tutorial centre that would run as a supplement to the school. This centre would focus on reading as well as the Computer Culture project which is looking at preserving Aboriginal culture and history.

For the past ten years Wheldall and Beaman have been running a tutorial centre based on MULTILIT (Making up for Lost time in Literacy) for the Exodus Foundation in Ashfield.

“The idea is to help kids early as school is not a very happy place for disadvantaged kids with poor literacy skills,” says Wheldall. “In Coen we hope to establish a similar program where kids have intensive instruction and can put on twelve months growth in less than six months.”

Pearson assembled state and federal bureaucrats in late November to ask for funding for the Coen project. The team was encouraged by the group to put forward a bid to the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) for the centre, which they are currently preparing.

Working together, Pearson and Wheldall hope to use education to break the cycle of disadvantage. “To break this cycle requires high level literacy skills so that by the time these kids reach high school they can get the most out of their education,” says Wheldall.

For further information about MULTILIT and the Coen project, contact Kevin Wheldall via e-mail: kevin.wheldall@mq.edu.au and/or refer to : www.multilit.com