What Questions Does the History of a Tri-Border School Raise?

Submission – Education in Rural and Complex Environments What questions does the history of a tri-border school raise? Max Angus 4 March 2020 Introduction This submission presents a brief history of a particular school located in the tri-border region of Central Australia. The account is confined to the years 1934 – 1990 and addresses most of the Committee’s terms of refence. It is drawn from a larger work in progress. The submission does not document the school’s more recent history; however, the argument can be made that the die was cast during the earlier years, and what happened during those years is an important factor shaping how schooling is provided today. In addition, arising from the history I make a number of observations about issues that are germane to the Committee’s term of reference. The views expressed are my own. The particular school to which most of the remarks refer Is today known as the Ngaanyatjarra Lands School, a composite of eight campuses, though until 1978 there was only a single institution - Warburton Range Primary School. Obviously, any generalisations to other schools should made with caution. The sub-category of schools to which generalisations about Warburton best fit are those with the following characteristics: • They are located within an Aboriginal-governed community in the tri-border region; • The vernacular speech is a Western Desert dialect; • There is no local industry in or near the community offering employment opportunities; • Entry to the community has always required a permit, isolating it from European society; and • There continues to be a strong attachment to the Tjukurrpa and the Law; this attachment overrides the usual civic obligations that apply in predominantly European settlements. There are not many such schools, yet they are distinctive institutions and from a policy perspective should be considered separately from the more inclusive Australian Standard Geographic Classification categories of ‘remote’ or ‘very remote’. Chronology of Warburton Ranges School 1933 Fewer than 90 years ago there was no schooling in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands. The people were hunter gatherers and travelled about their country in small bands of 10 to 15 people. Children learned by observing adults and older siblings, practising essential skills, and participating in the spiritual and ceremonial life. The documentary Desert People filmed in 1967 shows Warburton people living a traditional life. Some of the people in that film are still alive today. 1 1934 When missionaries arrived in 1934, they established a school to facilitate their evangelical work. For the next twenty years schooling was provided for children cared for in dormitories. For practical reasons instruction was limited to one, or two hours per day. The teachers had no professional training and the instruction focused on developing English language competence, bible stories and singing hymns. The Mission actively sought to eradicate the children’s Aboriginal spiritual beliefs, many of which they thought had satanic overtones. 1954 When the Education Department took over responsibility for operating the Mission’s school, it employed the teachers and adopted an ‘Aboriginal curriculum’, a simplified version of the standard curriculum. The children who were enrolled continued to live in Mission dormitories. Attendance was therefore nearly 100 per cent. Students achievement clustered around the middle -primary years though a few were able to perform at the upper-primary level. 1956 The Commissioner for Native Welfare recognised that there was no work in Warburton for students who completed schooling and decided to relocate students to Cosmo Newbery Mission and eventually to close Warburton Mission. This plan was shelved as a result of the intercession of Member of Parliament, Bill Grayden. 1960 The Mission decided to end the dormitory system and the children returned to live with their families in the nearby camps. 1966 Teenagers, some of whom had spent time in special ‘project’ classes in Kalgoorlie, Norseman or Esperance, found there was no benefit from having attended secondary school. Nor was there anything constructive for them to do in Warburton. They began marauding around the Mission site and the incidence of vandalism, and petty theft spiked. This anti-social behaviour became an ongoing problem with no end in sight. At the same time, attendance in the primary classes was declining. 1970 Hopes for commercially viable copper and nickel mining industries (with job opportunities for Warburton people) were dashed as the companies involved packed up and left. There were no major employers with whom Warburton school leavers could look for a job. 1970 In a review of the Ngaanyatjarra Lands (or Warburton and Central Reserves as the lands were than known) by a management consultant team, the report drew attention to the low levels of literacy and numeracy achieved by the school. There was a suggestion that Warburton School should become an ‘experimental school’. The implied criticism was repudiated by the Education Department authorities who maintained that the Ngaanyatjarra people should make a greater effort to fit in with the school’s requirements. The report indicated that future economic development would be reliant on various craft and cottage industries. It pinned the greatest hope on the development of a tourism industry. There were no secondary facilities in Warburton, and no one knew what vocational preparation would be appropriate under the circumstances described in the report. 1973 The Mission closed, and the Aboriginal Affairs Planning Authority began to hand over the responsibility for managing the ‘new Warburton’ to the Warburton Community Inc. whose members lived on the Warburton and Central Reserves. There was growing uncertainty and unrest in the Warburton community. The inexperienced Council found it difficult to address the many concerns that were now referred to it. The school was not involved in this process. 1974 At the instigation of United Aborigines’ Mission linguists, the Education Department reluctantly agreed to implement a bilingual education program in the early primary years at Warburton school. 2 Children in the early years were taught to read and write in the vernacular Ngaanyatjarra dialect. The innovation had the backing of the Commonwealth Government. The program ran successfully for two years before fading and concluding a few years later. It was found to be too hard to staff with teachers who had acquired sufficient competence in the dialect, and it imposed additional complexity on the administration of the school. 1974 In this year most Warburton adults became beneficiaries of unemployment benefits; these payments removed the incentive to look for work. There seemed little point in the school advocating for vocational training. 1975 Frustrations of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in Warburton came to a head. Nurses were withdrawn from the settlement as a result of concerns about their safety. Teachers followed a fortnight later. Finally, contractors working on the new hospital packed up and left. One teacher elected to remain and keep the school open with the assistance of four local Aboriginal teacher aides. Attendance reached 80. A new principal, a volunteer, arrived later in the year and continued to employ the aides. Later, barbed wire fences were erected around buildings, including the school. The residents continued to live in brush shelters and life in the camp sites were described by officials as being of Third World standard. 1976 From 1973, with Commonwealth government backing, Ngaanyatjarra people whose homelands were to the east of Warburton began to migrate to them and set up camp. Basically, they required bores for drinking water, access to medical support, and food supplies delivered by truck. The provision of a school was high on their list of priorities. In 1976 the Education Department appointed an itinerant teacher to supervise teacher aides at four sites - Wingellina, Jameson, Warrakurna (Giles) and Blackstone. A second itinerant teacher arrived the following year. In later years, a teacher was appointed and provided with a caravan and a prefabricated one-room school building. The demography of the Lands was changing. In 1974 the peak school enrolment at Warburton was 123, but owing to the outmigration to each of the sites, dropped to 49 in 1979. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s Warburton enrolled between one-half to one-fifth of the total number of enrolled students in the Lands. The remainder were distributed among the growing number of outstation schools. This period was characterised by a very high level of inter-school mobility, severely hampering the work of teachers. 1977 In 1977 the Commonwealth introduced the Community Development Employment Project (CDEP). It enabled the agency officials in charge of Warburton to consolidate all the unemployment benefit to which people in the Lands were entitled and transfer them to the Warburton Community where they could be reissued in the form of wages for those residents in the Community who volunteered to work on community development projects. CDEP transformed Warburton as it enabled for the first time the Community to assume responsibility for needed improvements that had hitherto been perceived as ‘whitefella’ business. There was no vocational education. 1984 After a decade of pleading for a high school in the Lands, secondary education facilities finally arrived. Though the decision raised hopes, it soon became evident that a viable secondary education program required much more than demountable buildings. There were now schools in the outstations, some with relatively low numbers. It was difficult to staff the program and the optimistic forecasts of enrolments vastly exceeded the numbers attending on a day-to-day basis. Even were the program to have met with success, there was no clear thinking about where graduates might find a job. 1988 The Tri-State Project was initiated by the South Australian Education Department to enhance collaboration among education authorities in the three jurisdictions with schools in the central 3 desert region.

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