Page 4866 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 1 November 2017
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I truly enjoyed my visit to the Mount Austin Clontarf Academy, which comprises several well-provisioned rooms in the Mount Austin High School campus, a school which serves a very low socio-economic area. More than three-quarters of the students at this school have a background that falls into the bottom quartile economically, with no students coming from the top quartile. This is a school which has a 42 per cent Indigenous enrolment, yet the attendance record for these Indigenous students is equal to or higher than that of some schools here in the ACT. I do not say similar schools here in Canberra, as we truly do not have an equivalent in terms of either the numbers of Indigenous students who attend Mount Austin or the socio-economic status of students.
Their attendance record is remarkable. According to the school principal, this is having a positive impact on students. There are improvements in educational outcomes, levels of self-esteem, life skills and employment prospects of the young Aboriginal men involved in the academy.
So what is Clontarf Academy? Why is it able to have such a positive impact on the students? I met with the Clontarf Academy staff, having previously met with Brendan Maher, the New South Wales zone manager. The Clontarf Foundation was started in Western Australia by former Fremantle Dockers coach Gerald Neesham. Clontarf exists to improve the education, discipline, life skills, self-esteem and employment prospects of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men across Australia. By doing so, it equips them to participate meaningfully in society. Academy activities are planned with a focus on these areas, using the sporting and cultural interests of the students to make connections with them.
A key focus of the program is retention and attendance, with year-to-year retention at 90 per cent and school attendance rates greater than 80 per cent for schools who house at Clontarf Academy. One of the staff said, “You don’t do well at school if you are not here.” Certainly, many of the students at Mount Austin achieve this target. After completing Year 12, students are supported to either enter further education and training or land a job, with specialist employment officers engaged to provide support until graduates are comfortable with their job and their new environment.
As a charitable not-for-profit organisation, it relies on the funding received from the federal government and state or territory governments and donations from the private sector. At Mount Austin this includes, for example, donations in kind for an annual supply of breakfast cereals from Kellogg.
Why visit the Clontarf Academy at Wagga? Because Clontarf wants to open a campus here in Canberra. We have several schools with Indigenous students, and not all are achieving educationally at the level at which they could be. If attendance is one of the indicators, then some Canberra schools fall short of the 80 per cent target for Indigenous students. More than that, in a city with a high socio-economic index, our Indigenous students are still, on average, two and a half years behind their non-Indigenous peers. They fall behind in progressing to years 11 and 12 and completing their high school education or equivalent. Let us do what we can to support our students and invite Clontarf to the ACT and finally start closing the gap.
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