The Home School

Extract

With regard to the editorial in the October/November 1981 issue of The Aboriginal Child at School concerning successful approaches to the education of Aboriginal children, I thought it may be of some interest to readers of the journal (especially those teachers transferring to schools serving significant numbers of Aboriginal students) to read about The Home School’s approach to education. This approach does not cater for any special needs of Aboriginal (and Islander) students – indeed all of its students are treated and taught in the same way – but for some reason Aboriginal children appear to be happy at this school, want to continue their education there next year and/or in years to come, and are generally motivated enough to achieve at least a pass level in most of their subjects.

The Home School is a small, non-denominational, private, secondary boarding school and it has had fifteen students of Aboriginal descent enrolled as full boarders since 1978. They have mostly come from Aurukun, Laura and Mornington Island, and a grant from the Commonwealth Government covers their school fees. Eight of the 1981 Aboriginal students intend to return to this school in 1982, two of them to do Year 12 and four to do Year 11. All of these students are quite definite and enthusiastic about returning in 1982, which, in itself, is a success story, especially as many of them have been ‘cast-offs’ from the large state secondary schools in the local area. Either they had been truanting (in one case two girls had been at a local hostel for eight weeks before the hostel management found out that the girls had never attended the high school in which they had been enrolled) or they had been problem students and The Home School had been approached as a last chance for their successful education. (One boy who had been expelled from one of the local state secondary schools gave, a year later, The Home School’s major speech at the annual Speech Night, and a very impressive speech it is reported to have been.)