Phase One Workshops

Outcomes

Individual Participant Comments

All young people in the Northern Territory – and especially Indigenous young people in remote communities – have access to quality secondary education

Teachers committed and supported to stay in the bush are the absolute priority

• programs are lost when people go
• many only come for 2 years for a new experience
• incentives must be to come and stay
• teachers need support to deal with the stress and isolation, including cross-agency support
• teachers should be housed in reasonable conditions, equivalent to police and health workers.

We need a Territory plan for remote areas that embrace staff and infrastructure.

In remote areas we need support to ensure the entire family understands the importance of education.

In the NT we have one teacher for 17 students no matter where they are located. The disparity between the NTOEC formula and the remote areas is a joke.

New technologies, e.g. IDL, can run as separate modes. The work they can do is very important. They can bring the best teachers to the whole Territory.

Shared resourcing already happening in Katherine. However distance is the great impediment to effectively sharing materials and infrastructure. Language is also an impediment.

Need to think more Territory-wide on sharing the best through many channels.

All young people have quality teaching and learning that meets their learning needs at the various stages of their development

Middle Years is an important part of the solution.

Middle Years need particular skills and teaching styles and this approach should be underpinned by pedagogical change.

It is a period of huge emotional shift for children.

Will the Year 7 students move with the teachers?

Primary principals are already working on how it can happen. They believe that the Year 7 students should be in a middle school and are contemplating closing one primary and converting it into a middle school.

Middle Years do not need to be on a separate site. It can be a sub-school within its own governance.

Teachers working in the Middle Years will need professional development.

Distance Learning

All forms of remote learning need to be supported locally. Not just teachers for supervision but to assist the learning process.

NTOEC needs to be regionally based, not Darwin based.

Current distance learning model is outdated, overstaffed relative to schools.

Experience of one teacher originally from NTOEC now out in remote locations comments that the teaching modules they were writing from Darwin were quite inappropriate.

At Katherine High, if fewer than 6 students, then mostly use NTOEC. NTOEC do not visit as they are not funded to travel (have no travel vote).

All young people have access to support for their social and emotional needs when they need it

More young people stay on at school longer and more complete Year 12

Measures need to be much broader than now. We need to measure life long learning skills. We need to define success. This must be done within the student profile.

All young people are well prepared for their future pathways when they leave school

The Northern Territory community has confidence in the quality of its secondary education