Aboriginal Education at Walgett Primary School

Abstract

Across Australia many exciting developments are occuring in Aboriginal education. This section of the journal is planned so that teachers throughout the country can share with each other their thinking and their innovations, so that good ideas and successful practices can spread. In this issue we present a variety of reports.

In the Walgett Primary School there are 256 children who fit into the category of part-Aboriginal. This is 49.2% of the total school enrolment. In 1970 it was 42.9% and this 6.3% increase represents the trend in Walgett over the past few years. For quite some time teachers in Walgett have been conscious of the need to do something special for the Aboriginal children. Successive teachers and administrators have approached the problem with typically varying degrees of dedication, and always with what we might term a “conventional approach”. Predictably, results varied, and as late as 1969 35% of Aboriginal children left the primary stage either substantially or totally illiterate. This state of affairs was attributed to a degree of mental deficiency which some believed to be genetic. I shall return to this fallacy later.

During 1969 a number of factors contributed to a change in attitude, and consequently in approach, and since then marked advances have been made. It would hardly be appropriate to examine these in detail here, but certain points can be made with a degree of certainty.