Strong parents, proud students

Imanpa students at the MCG in Melbourne: (from left) Matthew Mumu, Jonathan Bulla, Marissa Pumpjack, Linda Williamson-Wongway, Janice Mumu and Tanya Bulla.

Parental encouragement, projects on country and rewards for attendance are achieving results in remote high schools.

2011 was a good year at the tiny high school in Imanpa, 200 kilometres east of Uluru in the Northern Territory. Parents in the community came together to make sure their children went to school regularly. The improvement to attendance rates has put a smile on everyone’s face.

Imanpa’s secondary middle school is a campus of Nyangatjatjara College.

“Some of the kids have attendance rates of 100 per cent,” says principal Chris Harvey.

Nyangatjatjara College, which has an Aboriginal board, was established in 1997 at the request of the people of Imanpa, Docker River and Mutitjulu so their teenage children would not have to leave home to continue their studies. The college now has campuses in all three communities.

Today a township of around 150 people, Imanpa was established in the late 1960s as a camp for the Mount Ebenezer cattle station. It is close to the Angas Downs Indigenous Protected Area where local men work as rangers.

“Nyangatjatjara College has an environmental studies teacher who is working with Angus Downs to progress career pathways,” says Harvey.

Harvey believed bringing the three Nyangatjatjara College campuses together for sports and academic projects builds confidence in both students and parents.

In 2011 students participated in a joint science project looking for evidence of possums on their homelands.

“Possums are a very important part of Aboriginal men’s culture,” says Harvey. “They’ve been disappearing from central Australia, so we went out with scientists and elders looking for droppings and scratch marks on trees.”

Also in 2011, girls from Monte Sant’ Angelo Mercy College in Sydney went camping with Imanpa students and helped remove weeds and restore habitat in the region.  And because Imanpa is farther east than the other campuses, its students are also able to get involved in projects tracking different species of fish in the Finke River.

“We are one of the only independent schools in the region,” says Harvey. “The Aboriginal board wants to retain the control and involvement in the school that independence offers them.

“There’s no single quick fix for improving attendance for remote Aboriginal kids,” he says. “It’s worked at Imanpa because we have a lot of community support. Parents expect their kids to go to school.”

“It’s helped by the fact that we’ve got a really dedicated teacher, Rachael Muller, who’s built up good relationships with the community and the kids.”

Earlier in the year six Imanpa students were rewarded for good school attendance with a trip to Melbourne to see a match at the MCG between the Melbourne Demons and the Gold Coast Suns.

Melbourne was chosen because the school’s football team is also called the Demons, but there was much more to the trip than sport.

Four of the students had never been outside the Northern Territory before, and all of them found it an educational experience. They visited the zoo and the aquarium, travelled along the Great Ocean Road and went to Sovereign Hill historic village in Ballarat.

A highlight was meeting Liam Jurrah, a Melbourne player originally from the central Australian community of Yuendumu.

“I got to go because I’d been to school every day,” says one of the students, Jonathan Bulla. “I will never forget it.”