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schools through a blend of direct instruction teaching
practices to support a child’s bicultural identity and
ability to function in ‘two worlds’. The model was
designed to improve the quality of formal education
in a way that complemented responsibility-based
reforms targeting student and parent behaviours.
The Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy school
model, based on a business case that was drafted
with a team of secondees, became government policy
in late 2009. With $7.7 million in start-up funding, an
education reform package started in the four welfare
reform communities. Today, it is implemented by
Good to Great Schools Australia, a partnership with
Queensland’s Department of Education and Training,
and has expanded beyond Cape York. Since 2015,
39 schools in remote parts of the Northern Territory,
Western Australia and Queensland have delivered
direct instruction or explicit instruction, with 20
of these making strong progress—particularly in
reading—in the first two years of assessment. The
principal of a remote school near Alice Springs said,
‘We are having the wonderful dilemma of dealing
with kids reading above their age level’
. 35More and
more mainstream schools in Queensland and New
South Wales are now signing up to join Good to Great
Schools Australia’s growing network.
Bernadine Denigan, CEO of Good to Great
Schools Australia, sees potential for replication
in other contexts where chronic marginalisation
has created a gap between children’s academic
(and other wellbeing) indicators, and those of
‘mainstream’ students:
Good to Great Schools Australia has developed
a niche practice around school reform in remote
Aboriginal communities.
While Jawun secondees ‘innovated and accelerated
the learning of Cape York’s education reformers’
, 36today the region has its own capability and capacity.
Noel Pearson said Jawun secondees played a vital
role in making his and other Indigenous leaders’
vision a reality:
How in hell did a mob of bank employees help us
get school reform up and running? It is because
we were able to use the bank’s expertise in
project management, information technology,
people management, and so on, to develop and
implement our academy model. We had strong
ideas about what we wanted, and these bankers
helped us put it into action!
Without secondees’ support for our programs,
education reform on the Cape wouldn’t have got
up; it’s as simple as that.
Other secondees supported reform initiatives
around education, financial literacy and leadership
development. These included Student Education
Trusts and a Family Income Management program
(replaced in 2011 by MPower), both of which
supported responsibility-based behavioural change
by providing supported, structured means for people
to manage their money and invest in children’s
education. Today, almost 1,000 Student Education
Trusts have been established by parents wishing to
save money for a child’s education, and almost
2,000 MPower members are enlisted.
Over the years, several hundred Jawun secondees
from almost 30 partner organisations have supported
Cape York reform initiatives by bringing otherwise
unavailable professional skills in finance and banking,
audit, legal, project management, human resources,
IT and marketing. They played a crucial role in
operationalising these reform products and training
Cape York Partnerships staff, balancing capacity
building with direct support.
Whole families have now been empowered by
aspects of the Cape York Agenda, a critical mass
of people rebuilding positive social norms—and a
source of pride for Cape York leaders:
It‘s fantastic when you see a family
interact with different points—whether
the leaders program, employment, or one
of our education entry points. We now
have families where all the children have
been touched by this work, which has
brought the parents along too.
—FIONA JOSE,
EXECUTIVE GENERAL MANAGER FOR CAPE
YORK PARTNERSHIPS, AND FORMER CEO OF CAPE YORK
INSTITUTE
50 JAWUN
2017 LEARNINGS AND INSIGHTS