The North Queensland Cowboys Submission to the Standing Committee on Indigenous Affairs Inquiry into educational opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students North Queensland Cowboys Introduction This submission to the Standing Committee on Indigenous Affairs Inquiry into educational opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students builds on and reinforces the written and verbal submissions provided to the Standing Committee’s 2012 Inquiry into the Contribution of Sport to Indigenous Wellbeing and Mentoring The North Queensland Cowboys and Cowboys Community Foundation The only professional football team of any code located in North Australia, the North Queensland Cowboys is a community owned not-for-profit which takes its responsibilities to the communities of the region most seriously. Our community-based ownership structure dictates that affecting positive social change and delivering real and measurable outcomes is an accountable part of our business model. A region greater in size than New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania combined, North Queensland is home to some of the most remote communities in the country. It is a region of mixed fortunes, of drought and cyclones, a region whose history, environment and economy has left some doing it tough. However, quite unlike any other region in the country, in North Queensland there is one sport and one brand that unites, excites and gives identity – one sport and one club that influences attitudes and shapes behaviours to create true change for boys and girls growing up in the region. With over one million North Queenslanders touched by our community programs over the last five years alone, the Cowboys took their commitment to creating true change to a whole new level in 2015 with the establishment of the Cowboys Community Foundation. A public benevolent institution with deductible gift recipient status with the ATO, the Cowboys Community Foundation broadens our capability to attract philanthropic and corporate sponsorship for our community program s while building on the Club’s achievements in delivering true change where it counts – real and life- impacting improvements in the education outcomes of those most disadvantaged or at-risk in our communities. The Cowboys Community Foundation delivers positive and enduring change by leveraging the power of sport and our national sporting heroes, along with the North Queensland Cowboys’ unique position in our region and across the nation more broadly. Making a real difference through targeted education-focused interventions for the most disadvantaged is the Cowboys Community Foundation’s mission. Our commitment to the communities and Indigenous people of North Queensland Our North Queensland geographical footprint covers a wide range of communities, from the tip of Cape York, west to the Northern Territory border and south through to Rockhampton. Through this vast area, approximately 23% of the population are Indigenous (source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing, 2011, unpublished data) and 7,608 are Indigenous aged between 15-19 years (source: Queensland Treasury, Synthetically Estimated Indigenous ERPs). Many of these Indigenous Australians live in remote communities outside of the major regional centres where access to education, health, employment and housing can be limited. 1 | Page North Queensland Cowboys We know from our work over the years in these communities that many of their young people face very real barriers to an equitable future. These barriers are at the core of the gap that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians – barriers in education, literacy, numeracy and language (with English very often being their second language) and barriers in health, diet and in access to employment and further training just to name a few. Our Try Time! program, conducted in high schools throughout the region, uses Cowboys players to engage students and work with them on social factors that have been identified as having a negative impact on their education such as social media, cyber safety, bullying, negative body image, mental health and well-being and youth suicide. Try Time! was developed with schools and youth services in recognition that most learning barriers in high school stem from the many “social” impacts and pressures that young people face and the difficulty many in regional areas have in accessing youth support services. We partner with professional organisations such as Head Space and Youth with a Mission to deliver modules in the schools which discuss and address these issues in a safe, non-threatening and non-judgemental manner. Of our significant suite of youth and community programs, a number have a specific focus on delivering real outcomes for Indigenous boys and girls. In particular three programs, the Cowboys Learn Earn Legend! program, Try for 5, and the Cowboys NRL House initiative all have a primary focus on achieving improved educational outcomes for indigenous young people in the region. Using sport to engage students – the prerequisite to education success The relationship between educational attainment and unemployment is well documented - those with a degree or a skilled vocation are approximately four times more likely to have a full-time job as a person who left school at age 15 or younger. Indigenous young people are far more likely to drop out of school earlier than non-Indigenous youth. According to the 2006 Census, only 26% of Indigenous persons is Queensland aged 15 and over had completed year 12 or equivalent compared to 44% of non-Indigenous persons in the same cohort (Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing, Indigenous Profile – I11). The relationship between the gaps in educational attainment and the future employment, health and even incarceration rates for Indigenous people are also well documented – they are the very reason why three of the six Council Of Australian Governments (COAG) Closing the Gap targets are education related. Moreover, it is for the same reason that all of our community programs and particularly those working with Indigenous young people focus first on engaging the boys and girls we are targeting. No matter whether the program has educational, health, sporting or other objectives, failure to engage the young people in the first instance will invariably lead to poor outcomes and unmet objectives. In particular, to gain a full and successful education, young people must obviously attend and participate in schooling, rather than just be enrolled. This is the case irrespective of the school or educational model in place. Successful engagement in education is additionally problematic for the many young Indigenous people living in remote communities in the region who need to relocate to major regional centres in order to attend high school. For these students there is a higher risk that they will suffer from homesickness and on returning to their community during school holidays, will then fail to return to complete their education. The importance of engaging family in supporting student’s continuing in education is no more important than with this group and 2 | Page North Queensland Cowboys the Cowboys brand has been shown to play an important role in engaging with family members as well as students. It is in response to the needs of this specific group of Indigenous young people that the Cowboys Community Foundation is working with the Australian and Queensland Governments to open Cowboys NRL House in time for the 2017 school year. Offering a unique boarding accommodation solution, Cowboys NRL House will enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young men from remote northern and western Queensland to attend a choice of secondary schools in Townsville. Cowboys NRL House will work with families and their communities to map the right secondary school pathway for each student and will provide the wrap-around support for their success, including tutoring, health and wellbeing and life-skills development. Planning is also underway for a comparable Cowboys NRL House facility for girls from remote communities. In this as in all of our community programs, we actively trade on the high profile of Rugby League and the Cowboys brand in particular to establish the interest of, and our relationship, with the young people we are aiming to engage. While the Club employs specialists to deliver our various programs, the active involvement and contributions of Indigenous legends and heroes like Johnathan Thurston and Matthew Bowen obviously also plays a critical role in engaging with Indigenous students and their families. Examples of our programs’ successes in working with schools in North Queensland and in offering incentives for students to attend school on a regular basis include: • The Try for 5 initiative recently funded by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet builds on the success of a number of pilot programs conducted by the Club and designed to improve school attendance rates. Those earlier pilots clearly demonstrated the capacity of the Cowboys brand and our players to engage students and deliver improved attendance outcomes. The Every Day Counts initiative at Rasmussen State School, a local primary school with a high proportion of Indigenous students challenged students to attend school at least 90% of the time over 20 days without unexplained absence. Of the 492 students, 97.9% successfully completed the challenge. As a reward for the effort, Johnathan Thurston personally awarded students tickets to a Cowboys home game. Similarly, a pilot of the Try for 5 program model delivered year-on-year improvements in primary school attendance rates of 5 percentage points. The recently funded 12 month Try for 5 program will target eight primary schools across Queensland with poor attendance records and a high proportion of Indigenous student enrollments: Western Cape College; Cooktown State School; Yarrabah State School; Garbutt State School; Sunset State School; Cunnamulla State School; Murgon State School and Dunwich State School • The Obe Geia Challenge program aims to reduce truancy levels in primary schools.