There was an engaging documentary Bush School on SBS tonight, about Warrego School in a ghost mining town out of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory. It started a few years ago with eleven Warlmanpa children from the Mangarlawurru [Mungalawurru] Aboriginal community travelling 80 km each day to get to there. They’re still going, singing their lessons in the bus. They attend 100% of the time, achieve national benchmarks in English literacy and numeracy, focus on horse-riding and swimming. The school is working hard to combat the hearing loss that most of the kids suffer from (ear infections have meant that several of the children have hearing aids). And they’ve sent one of their brightest students to study at a private girls school in New South Wales.
It’s required amazing energy, determination and interesting ideas from the non-Indigenous teachers, Sandra and Colin Baker, who are the centre of the doco. But it has also taken phenomenal dedication on the part of the small and determined Warlmanpa community at Mangarlawurru, who look after the kids and support this school – the grandparents and great grand parents, Eva Napanangka Kelly, Marie Napanangka Rennie and Colin Japaljarri Freddie. They are determined to raise their families away from the alcohol and despair of the local town. And undoubtedly the presence of the Bakers, even 40 km away, and the schooling, transport and opportunities they provide, have made it easier for Mangarlawurru community to keep going.
BUT – the downside – there are no natural successors to the Bakers at the school. There don’t seem to be any Indigenous teacher trainees in the school, even though the Northern Territory has a tertiary college which trains Indigenous teachers. The kids deserve a decent education when the Bakers retire, and teaching Indigenous kids shouldn’t require the 24/7 that the Bakers put into it. Nor should secondary education for Indigenous kids require them to get scholarships to private schools thousands of kilometres away.
And as for language – well, a handful of Warlmanpa families (including those at Mangarlawurru) have been tenaciously hanging onto their language against all the odds. But language doesn’t get much of a look in, in the doco – in fact I didn’t hear the word ‘Warlmanpa’. Just once in the program Marie got in a couple of sentences about how she and Eva were teaching the children ‘language’, the names of bush foods. One Warlmanpa word was nganjawarli ‘bush tomato’.
So, watch ‘Bush School’; it’s an endearing picture. But don’t take it as THE model for Indigenous education, because Bakers and Evas and Maries and Colins are rare, and the combination is even rarer.
Ngulayi!
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UPDATE: there’s a web forum about this on SBS, showing how many viewers were touched by the program, and want to help. The Bakers have also answered lots of questions from the forum participants. Here’s an answer to a question raised in this post:
“We have sent most of our grade sixs to NT secondary schools, day and boarding and have been impressed with the programmes and the staffs. The fact that children have not stuck has been no fault of the schools and some of the students have been our best performers. The reasons for our lack of success at transfere to secondary school in the NT are to be sought in some very complex sociology. ”
And finally – from the Bakers:
“All donations for the school are managed, at no cost to the school, by the Trust for Young Australians. Warrego School Acc, 5 St. Vincent Place Albert Park Vic. 3206.
All donations are tax deductable and all monies received by the trust go to the school or nominated student. \”
The vines pony club is located in sydney nsw. We would like to help the kids
from the Warrego PS with their horsemanship programme. I would like to get in touch with the Bakers however the phone number that i have been given isn’t working . I would love the Bakers to get in contact with us, so we could see what we could arrange. E-mail michelledobson25@hotmail.com for the contact number.
Thanks for the comment. I don’t have a contact for the Bakers, but the
e-mail address on the web forum on SBS after the showing of the
documentary is:
bushschool.warrego@gmail.com
If that doesn’t work, my suggestion is to try the Regional Superintendant
of the Barkly Region of the Northern Territory Education Department –
which would be listed in the NT Phone directory.
And a very sad footnote to the program. A few weeks ago, there was a terrible carcrash involving the parents of Latanzia, the young girl who went to boarding school in Armidale. Her father was killed and her mother suffered serious spinal injuries.