Extra resources can change lives

Nelson Mandela described education as being “a powerful weapon to change the world” – at Yarrabah State School we are all working extremely hard to ensure that our students are equipped to guarantee this change is achieved.

Yarrabah State School is situated in the Yarrabah Aboriginal Council, which is approximately 50 kilometres by road from Cairns. It caters for students from pre-prep to year 10 and has a successful Remote Area Teacher Education Program (RATEP) allowing students to continue their learning journey. Students attending the school are of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander descent and enter school with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Most students speak Yarrie Lingo (Kriol) as their home language and are taught standard Australian English as an additional language at school.

Yarrabah is a thriving and diverse community with many people, cultures and histories. The community also faces inter-generational challenges. These challenges include high unemployment and families living in poverty, which stem from long-term social issues that have been the result of the marginalisation and discrimination of First Peoples Australians.

Although students from Yarrabah State School face a range of challenges in their everyday life, over the past few years, students and teachers have been changing views and opinions in Far North Queensland. We have installed specific programs within each cohort, tailored to the learning needs of our students. This has seen huge improvements in our reading and NAPLAN data, with rapid student improvements and our students’ increasing desire to read resulting in the school having to investigate other reading and learning programs and purchase more challenging books. A mother at our recent Foundation Day celebrations even advised me that “the school has improved to the point that it is now positively impacting on the community”.

The school has also successfully put in place a LOTE program, connecting students to Yarrabah’s history through the teaching of the traditional language of the Gunggandji people, the traditional owners of the land. Students, for the first time, are connecting cultural language with school and are also learning valuable lessons in their history, as well as learning a third language.

It is very clear that students and staff at Yarrabah State School are working hard, having success and reaching goals. Despite this, the educational gap between my students in Yarrabah and those in other schools within Queensland is widening. The gap is getting bigger and unfortunately we find ourselves in a situation where our achievements thus far are redundant due to the loss of focus on fair resourcing and funding for all students, no matter what their circumstances.

If my students had access to both adequate health and educational resources I am 100 per cent sure that they would be achieving at a higher level. The staff members at Yarrabah State School are hard-working and dedicated to their profession, but without adequate resources and funding, students can only achieve to a certain level, as teachers can only provide the necessities.

There is no simple solution, we all accept that. Fair funding and resourcing, however, creates an even playing field, offering the opportunity for all our students to reach their full potential. If we can achieve that, then I believe that we will have taken a step in the right direction.

Tom McCartney
QTU Union Rep

Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 119 No 6, 22 August 2014, p15