Annabel Stafford
May 26,
2007
EVERY indigenous child will have an individualised learning plan, updated
twice a year until they reach year 10, under a Labor plan to halve the literacy
and numeracy gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students within a decade.
Each plan would take in a child's strengths and weaknesses across reading,
writing and arithmetic and set out targets.
The plan is part of a three-pronged approach — including initiatives on
health and early childhood development — that a Labor Government would adopt to
close the 17-year life expectancy gap between Aborigines and other Australians
within a generation.
The release of Labor's first major statement on indigenous affairs is timed
to coincide with the 40th anniversary this weekend of the referendum in which
more than 90 per cent of Australians voted for Aborigines to be counted in the
census.
Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd will tell an audience gathered to celebrate the
anniversary that Labor's plan "will begin with a commitment to the generation of
indigenous children who are being born now".
"Literacy and numeracy are the building blocks upon which every individual
builds his or her participation in society, capacity to work, and (ability) to
lead a healthy and active life," Mr Rudd is expected to say.
But as it is, 22 per cent of indigenous children do not reach reading
benchmarks in year 3, and 36 per cent are failing by the time they get to year 5
and year 7, according to figures in the 2005 National Report on Schooling
provided by Labor. About 19 per cent of Aboriginal children do not reach
numeracy targets in year 3, worsening to 51 per cent in year 7. In writing, 27
per cent do not meet targets.
A Labor government would spend $34.5 million over four years to train
teachers to create and enact the individualised plans. It would also introduce a
four-year, $21.9 million literacy and numeracy "blitz" to bring underachieving
students up to the level of their classmates using existing intensive learning
programs run by non-government groups.
Indigenous Affairs spokeswoman Jenny Macklin said intensive programs such as
the Yachad Project — which uses techniques designed to help Ethiopian immigrants
in Israel — had "demonstrated really great results. We know they're making a
difference, but now we want them to be comprehensive (across all schools)."
Ms Macklin said Labor would encourage parents to help out with intensive
learning both at school and at home.
Labor's policy will be released at the same time as a book by the
conservative Centre for Independent Studies, which argues that the lives of the
90,000 or so Aborigines in homelands or remote communities will never improve
without basic skills such as literacy and numeracy.
■ Four Victorians taken from their parents as children are due to become the
first indigenous people in the state to receive compensation for their forced
removal. One Ballarat woman expects payment of between $20,000 and $40,000.
With ANDRA JACKSON
