Community Consultations - 2004

Overview

Prior to making any decisions about the proposals in the Secondary Education Report, the Government sought the views of Territorians involved or interested in the education of the Territory's young people on the report's proposals.

This community input helped to inform the Government's decision making on the recommendations in the report. There were a range of views about the Seconday Education Report's recommendations collected during the community consultation process and wide spread discussion was generated about many of the report's proposals. The Community Consultation on the Secondary Education Report highlighted the opinions, issues and arguments raised during the consultation process and were presented to Government in September 2004.

Consultation Process

Ms Sheila O'Sullivan of Socom NT was engaged to facilitate a three-phase community consultation process using a consultation model designed to maximise the opportunity for community participation and feedback.

Phase One of the process, conducted in May 2004, involved a range of stakeholder representatives such as parents, educators, professional associations, youth workers, business and industry, participating in workshops held throughout the Territory. At these workshops participants were presented with information about the report and discussed the issues, proposals and outcomes in the report. Click here to find out what was said at the Phase One workshops.

Participants in Phase One were given tools, including a reader's guide, to assist them to lead an intensive public discussion around the report's proposals with their school and local community in Phase Two of the process. Phase Two was completed at the end of July 2004, with over 160 submissions received from various stakeholder groups from around the Territory.

Education Discussion Forums were then held in all Territory regional centres, as Phase Three of the consultation process. At these forums a range of views from the various stakeholder groups were presented in a public discussion about the propositions that had emerged as those being of most interest to the community. Audience members were also given the opportunity to put forward their views about the propositions and were provided with an Individual Response Sheet which was collected to form part of the community feedback on the report.

In addition to the Three Phase consultation process, members of Indigenous Education Division, Department of Employment, Education and Training, accompanied by the Priority Education team, visited seven remote Indigenous communities that have secondary provision to discuss the report's proposals. These people also worked with linguists in a number of language groups at the Remote Schools Conference held in Alice Springs. Over 200 people attended the conference and the feedback was collated and forwarded to Socom.

Materials were developed to ensure that Indigenous people in remote communities were able to understand and provide feedback about the report's proposals. These were distributed to all remote schools.