Strategies And Policies For Inclusion And Support Of Aboriginal And/or Torres Strait Islander Students And Their Families In Schools

Many voice: One Shared Vision policy to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education

Australian Government is determined to improve the educational system and associated outcomes for aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders and to assure that, it is regulating and managing the policies and procedures of each and every schools within state and territories (Price 2015). The primary aim of the government is to provide standard education to each student equally and improve the outcomes for all of them (Hall 2015). In that course, school and other educational organizations are asked to acknowledge the governmental policy and include procedures and strategies so that the aboriginal and other indigenous communities could be provided with equal and proper educational strategies to improve their literacy outcomes.

In this section, one such policy has been identified namely, “Many voice:  One Shared Vision”, developed by the board Sydney catholic schools with compliance to the governmental educational policy for aboriginal and indigenous communities (Sydney Catholic Schools 2016). This policy aims to provide equal rights to the aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders for their education and plays an important role in developing such students both socially and morally to take part in the society for its development. Further, this policy also helps to spread the awareness about their educational rights, their culture and also about the need of implementation of “BOSTES cross curriculum priority” so that quality partnership among the society and different communities could be developed (Sydney Catholic Schools 2016).

This document helps to spread the awareness about importance of inclusion of aboriginals and other indigenous communities within the education system by developing several policies and strategies and assures its implementation within schools.

As per this document, it is important for each educational institute to develop an educational plan for aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders and it is important for the facility to comply with the policies and strategies mentioned within ‘SCS aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Strategic Plan 2014-18’ in which students and their professional learning opportunities are developed and implemented and partnership between the school committee and the community members are developed for their educational improvements (Sydney Catholic Schools 2016). Further, the schools will implement strategies so that people belonging to aboriginal or Torres Strait Island could take admissions in catholic schools and hence, they are required to develop the school enrollment policy (Arney et al. 2015). Besides these, the school facilities need to ensure that their school environment is culturally competent and the subject community will be able to learn in such environment without any discrimination (Price 2015).

Importance of implementing educational plan for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students

For inclusion of aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders within the school environment, there are four strategies which could be implemented. These are as follows:

• awareness regarding the community, its importance, their history and their rights and responsibilities towards the land should be spread among the students, faculty members and staff so that while their course of education, maximum support from these other stakeholders could be achieved (Hall 2015).
• It is important that all the policies and procedures provided by the state government should be included in the school and hence, it’s proper monitoring and review should be done. Further, rectification or amendment should also be included if required to provide maximum benefit to the subject community (Price 2015).
• It is important to develop a bonding among the communities in the society as their equation in the society will reflect in the environment of school. Hence, the school needs to arrange activities and programs where chances of such communities and their amalgamation would be possible (Price 2015).
• The school should also recruit few staff members or educators from the community so that their representation in the school draws the focus of the community and they can enroll their children in such facility (Hall 2015).

To manage the information of aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students within schools, a separate information database will be developed and within that, all the information such as educational improvements, medication history, future strategies to improve their lack of knowledge and history of any adverse condition they faced will be saved (Green et al. 2014). Further, these details will be shared only with the parents and educators of the student. Besides this, in any adverse health condition, helathcare professionals will be provided with the information of the student (Walter 2016).

The lesson provided to the students through this plan should provide the students with a detailed idea of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders and their cultural and social values so that a culturally competent environment could be developed within the school (Lloyd et al. 2015). Further, understanding of the community and its contribution to the Australian society and its integrity was spread to the students through this session so that discrimination, social exclusion and bullying within the school facility could be avoided within school facility (Dobia and Roffey 2017).

Several information regarding the aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders will be included in the lesson plan which requires proper description and management will be transferred to the students with proper documents. This is because informations such as cultural values and beliefs, information about the lack within the community or the history of their growth and development is important to the aboriginal community and could lead to discrimination among students within the school (Green et al. 2014). Hence, proper management of such information will be ensured. Involving aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders within the planning of such lesson is an important step using which, the above-mentioned concern could be resolved (Dobia and Roffey 2017). For this purpose, the details and informations which should be spread among the students will be verified by the community representatives within the school facility or the parents of the students belonging to such community so that proper knowledge could be transferred to the students through this lesson plan (Lloyd et al. 2015).

Parents, families and communities play an important role in child’s growth development and affects their education, their mental growth and physical development (Tilbury 2015). Parker and Milroy (2014) mentions that aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders and their educational needs could only be fulfilled if the communities could be integrated within the Australian society with respect to their values, beliefs, and ideologies. Further Gee et al. (2014) also mentioned that without the support of such communities for the inclusion of their children in the overall Australian community, achievement of integrated education, equal educational rights and inclusive society could not be achieved. Therefore, the school committee should focus on strategies through which such families could be involved in strategy making and planning of scopes through which such students could be included in the system. These are as follows:

• Increasing the involvement of aboriginal and indigenous families within the informal education and training of students, where they will be taught about the important contribution these families have done for Australian society (Arney et al. 2015).
• Recruiting staff members and educators of this community within school and provide them with the scope of active participation so that aboriginal families could be influenced and they could enroll their children in the facility for educational growth and development (Green et al. 2014).
• Ensuring there is a cross-cultural bonding developing in the institute among the educators as well as the students and providing training to the employees to involve aboriginal students in class discussion and sessions to influence their active participation (Tilbury 2015).
• Organizing bi-annual cultural festivities and include aboriginal students to showcase their cultural and social values in these festivities so that others could become aware of their ideologies and values and inclusion could be enforced (Arney et al. 2015).

Part B: need to be filled by the assessor

References

Arney, F., Iannos, M., Chong, A., McDougall, S. and Parkinson, S., 2015. Enhancing the implementation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle. Child Family Community Australia, Australian Institute of Family Studies, 34.

Dobia, B. and Roffey, S., 2017. Respect for Culture—Social and Emotional Learning with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Youth. In Social and Emotional Learning in Australia and the Asia-Pacific (pp. 313-334). Springer, Singapore.

Gee, G., Dudgeon, P., Schultz, C., Hart, A. and Kelly, K., 2014. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social and emotional wellbeing. Working together: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and wellbeing principles and practice, 2, pp.55-68.

Green, A., DiGiacomo, M., Luckett, T., Abbott, P., Davidson, P.M., Delaney, J. and Delaney, P., 2014. Cross-sector collaborations in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander childhood disability: a systematic integrative review and theory-based synthesis. International journal for equity in health, 13(1), p.126.

Hall, L., 2015. What Are the Key Ingredients for an Effective and Successful Tertiary Enabling Program for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students? An Evaluation of the Evolution of One Program. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 55(2), pp.244-266.

Lloyd, N.J., Lewthwaite, B.E., Osborne, B. and Boon, H.J., 2015. Effective teaching practices for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students: A review of the literature. Australian Journal of Teacher Education (Online), 40(11), p.1.

Parker, R. and Milroy, H., 2014. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health: an overview. Working together: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and wellbeing principles and practice. 2nd ed. Canberra: Department of The Prime Minister and Cabinet, pp.25-38.

Price, K., 2015. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education: An introduction for the teaching profession. Cambridge University Press.

Sydney Catholic Schools. 2016. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy – Many Voices: One Shared Vision. Retrieved from https://sydcatholicschools.nsw.edu.au/2016/03/31/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-education-policy/

Tilbury, C., 2015. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families in Australia: Poverty and child welfare involvement. In Theoretical and Empirical Insights into Child and Family Poverty (pp. 273-284). Springer, Cham.

Walter, M., 2016. Social exclusion/inclusion for urban Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Social Inclusion, 4(1), pp.68-76.

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