Exploring the Impact of Indigenous Education Policies in Australia

This essay examines the impact of Indigenous education policies in Australia. It focuses on three key areas: early childhood education, school and community educational partnerships, and school leadership. The essay highlights the importance of these policies in promoting education and learning among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, emphasizing their role in fostering societal growth and development. It explores how these policies, supported by political bodies and social involvement, have influenced the educational landscape, providing access to education and contributing to cultural and social development. The essay also discusses the specific objectives and benefits of each policy, including financial support, school development in rural areas, and the promotion of leadership skills, concluding that education is crucial for societal advancement and that the Australian government's initiatives have played a significant role in this process.

EDUCATION

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
PART A – Three types of Indigenous policies in Australia ...........................................................3
Part B – Excerpt from Indigenous Policies .....................................................................................4
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Society and history have a great impact on the public policy, the people living in a
society highly influence the policies developed for themselves. The policies are planned and
developed for the people living in the society in order to achieve development and growth it is
important that the policies made are accepted by the society. This essay is in context to the
various policies developed in favor of the public or society in Australia. The policies are
implemented for the growth and development of the society but also have some negative effect
on the well-being of the public. Furthermore, the essay will discuss various public policies and
their impact on the politics, Society and culture within Australia.
PART A – Three types of Indigenous policies in Australia
Indigenous Policies are very important for the growth and development of the young
children which leads to the development of the society as well as the whole country. These
policies are developed to spread awareness regarding education among the people or community.
There are three themes in the Australian indigenous education policies, one of the major theme
which is very important is the need for schools to form partnerships for decision making with the
indigenous communities. The first objective of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Education Policy gives clear direction for indigenous engagement in education decision
making(Heyeres and et.al, 2018).
 The Major objective 1 – Engagement of Aboriginal and Torres Trait Islander People in
Educational Decision Making.
 The Major objective 2 – Equality of Access to various Education services.
 The Major Objective 3 – Equity of Educational Engagement
 The Major objective 4 – Appropriate and Equitable Educational Results.
The Ministerial council of Education, Employment, Training and Youth affairs policy Australia
established in 2005 to 2008 within the Indigenous Education also gives a logical concept for
Indigenous education consisting partnership in the decision making process. It states five policies
for Indigenous education -
1. Early childhood education
2. School and Community educational partnerships
3. School leadership

All the three policies within Indigenous education focus on the development of the society and
its people through education. Earlier the society was not supporting educational development in
the society, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were not interested in educational
development. It was due to the lack of schools in rural areas and the low standard of living or
financial issues. Then islander people were financially weak and were not able to afford the
education expenses. The establishment and implementation of the indigenous policies such as
Early childhood education, School and Community educational partnership and School
leadership supported the Islander people to take interest in Educational development, the policies
provided financial support, development of schools in the rural areas and communities so that the
children in those areas get easy access to education. These policies contributed in the growth and
development o the society and its people by providing access to education, Australian political
bodies or government played an important role in the establishment o the Indigenous polices in
the country they supported the development of schools in rural areas, the society accepted this
development as they got aware of the importance of education and the intention of the policies
which is to achieve growth and development of the society.
Part B – Excerpt from Indigenous Policies
There are three main policies of Indigenous education which are as mentioned below -
1. Early childhood Education Policy – The first policy in indigenous policy is the Early
childhood education policy. This policy focus on providing indigenous education to the
children of the society, this was a major policy which help local people to understand the
need and importance of education the development and growth of the society and its
people. Australia has inclusive and fair activities that focus equality, high completion and
quality for education of the children. The Early education and care has experienced a rush
of policy attention in past years at the international and national level(Stavenhagen,2015).
The Early childhood education in Australia is nor compulsory but it is provided to the
children by various types of settings such as pre-schools and childcare centres. The Early
education policy contributed in the growth of the society or community by offering
access to education for the children in early childhood. This helped in the social and
culture development of the community, the children are getting information about the
society and culture with the help of childhood education. It is important for the people to
understand need and importance of education from the establishment of early childhood

education through pre-schools or kindergarten. The children develop many skills and
knowledge at early childhood with the help of this respective policy. This contribute in
the growth and development of the society and its people by spreading awareness among
the people regarding education and building interest for education from an early age in
children(Bishop and et.al, 2014).
2. School and Community educational partnerships – The other policy is regarding
partnership between school and community to promote and provide education to the
people in the society or community. This policy enabled the relation between the schools
and community to offer various education programs in Australian societies. The people
started supporting schools and educational centres with implementation of the partnership
policy. When schools and community bodies operate together for supporting learning,
every individual gets benefits. This partnership between schools and community
supports, strengthen and transform individual partners which result in the improvement of
educational program quality, efficient utilization of resources and effective setting of
objectives and goals. Firstly education and learning partnerships helps in supporting
student outcome. The after school programs developed by these partnerships build strong
relationship between teachers and students which helps in improving students homework
completion, efforts, initiative and positive behaviour. The partnership between schools
and community not only supports the students directly but also have many other benefits
for the students and their families. These benefits are as described below -
 It helps in providing continuity of services everyday across a year, it promotes
improvement in attendance and easing school transitions in after school programs.
 Facilitating access to various opportunities of learning and developmental supports, it
provides opportunities for teachers and students similarly in order to experiment with
new approaches to learning and teaching.
 It helps in facilitating the sharing of information about specific students for supporting
individual learning.
 Providing family members with various entry points within the school days in order to
support their students learning(Wilson,2014).
This policy encouraged the political parties or bodies to support partnership between schools and
community as people are in favour of this concept or idea. Hence, political support was achieved

by this policy, along with political support various social involvement was observed in the
implementation of the partnerships. The people started motivating others for developing the after
school programs for the students which played a major role in the growth of this policy. Cultural
activities were also involved in the after school learning programs which helped in development
of cultural values and traditions among the students.
3. School leadership – This is another important and effective policy developed in Australia to
develop and promote education or learning among the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
people. This policy focus on developing leadership quality among the students which can help
them to lead an education center or school as a teacher or principle. The school leadership
programs helps the student to understand leadership, functions and roles of a leader. This policy's
concern was to encourage children or people for leading the educational bodies effectively so
that the students can grow and develop their knowledge by attaining education. The political,
social and cultural area of communities in Australia supported this policy to grow or expand the
educational bodies in the society and community to ease the access of learning for the Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander people(McCarty and Lee,2014).
Conclusion
The report concluded that education is very important for each and every society and its
people. The Australian government bodies developed various polices to promote education
among the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It is important to promote education and
learning among the society for the growth and development as concluded in this essay. The
report described the various policies developed by Australian legal bodies for promoting
education have been discussed in the essay such as Early childhood Education Policy, School
and Community educational partnerships, School leadership which played a major role in
educational development within Australia. The essay also described various areas these policies
address and the impact of the policies on various areas such political, social and cultural area of a
community or society.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
McCarty, T. and Lee, T., 2014. Critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy and
Indigenous education sovereignty. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), pp.101-124.
Wilson, B., 2014. A share in the future: Review of Indigenous education in the Northern
Territory. Education Business.
Bishop, R., Berryman, M. and Wearmouth, J., 2014. Te Kotahitanga: Towards effective
education reform for indigenous and other minoritised students. Wellington: NZCER
Press.
Stavenhagen, R., 2015. Indigenous Peoples' Rights to Education. European Journal of
education, 50(3), pp.254-257.
Heyeres, M., McCalman, J., Langham, E., Bainbridge, R., Redman-MacLaren, M., Britton, A.,
Rutherford, K. and Tsey, K., 2018. Strengthening the Capacity of Education Staff to
Support the Wellbeing of Indigenous Students in Boarding Schools: A Participatory
Action Research Study. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, pp.1-14.