Kids, skidoos and carribou: the junior Canadian ranger program as a model for re-engaging Indigenous Australian youth in remote areas

The social and educational disengagement of Indigenous youth, who see education and training as irrelevant to their lives and experiences,is a looming crisis for many Indigenous communities in remote Australia. This paper is an exploration of a youth program in Canada, the Junior Canadian Rangers (JCRs), that addresses a similar crisis in that country. The Canadian program is of national importance to Canada in the context of not only community stability and capacity development but also border security, marine management in coastal areas and in search and rescue services. While Australia has an Defence Force Cadel program that operates in a limited number of Indigenous communities, it is a more traditional and much smaller cadel program. This paper suggests there is a value in adapting some of the components of the Canadian program in Australia

Endogenous Growth, Public Capital, and the Convergence of Regional Manufacturing Industries

Several explanations can be offered for the unbalanced growth of U.S. regional manufacturing industries in the decades after World War II. The convergence hypothesis suggests that the success of the South in catching up to the Northeast and Midwest should be understood by analogy with the economic success of Japan and the rest of the G-7 in closing the gap relative to the U.S. as a whole. Endogenous growth theory, on the other hand, assigns a central role to capital formation, broadly defined. A variant of endogenous growth theory focuses on investments in public infrastructure as a key determinant of regional growth. Finally, traditional location theory stresses the evolution of regional supply and demand and the role of economies of scale and agglomeration. This paper compares these alternative explanations of U.S. regional growth by testing their predictions about the productive efficiency of regional manufacturing industries. We find little evidence that technological convergence explains the regional evolution of U.S. manufacturing industry, or that endogenous growth was an important factor. We also find little evidence that public capital externalities played a significant role in explaining the relative success of industries in the South and West. The main engine of differential regional manufacturing growth over the period 1970-86 seems to be inter-regional flows of capital and labor. The growth of multifactor productivity is essentially uniform across regions, although there is some variation in the initial levels of efficiency.

Income Originating in the State and Local Sector

In this paper we develop an accounting framework for the state and local sector which is consistent with the accounting framework for the private sector of the economy. We show that the public sector capital stock generates an imputed return which takes the form of a reduction in local taxes and that failure to recognize this income distorts the measurement of the output of this sector, confuses the debate over federal tax reform, and hides the distinction between general subsidies for capital formation. Our implementation of those accounts for the 1959- 1985 period indicates that current national income accounting procedures misstate the amount of income originating in the state and local sector; in recent years this misstatement has been on the order of $100 billion. We also show that the state and local sector is one of the more capital intensive sectors of the economy.

Indigenous TAFE graduates: Patterns and implications

Technical and Further Education is now recognised as one of the most significant and popular avenues for Indigenous participation in education, yet a reliable statistical portrait of Indigenous participation in TAFE has never been readily available. Even less has been known about the success stories in this sector; the Indigenous students who have completed TAFE studies. The Graduate Outcomes Technical and Further Education Australia 1995 provides for the first time a range of important insights into the experience of Indigenous TAFE graduates, yet the findings of that survey have not been widely accessible and the analysis of data related to the Indigenous graduates has thus far been negligible. This paper focuses on comparisons between Indigenous and non-Indigenous TAFE graduates and reveals some important similarities and differences between the two graduate groups. Among the key findings are: a wide variation in the distribution of Indigenous TAFE graduates, often disproportionate to the Indigenous population, among the various States and Territories; - an over-representation of Indigenous graduates among recipients of basic Certificates, coupled with an under-representation among recipients of more specialised Trade Certificates, Advanced Certificates, and Associate Diploma and Diploma qualifications; a comparatively higher likelihood of employment among non-Indigenous graduates; - increased employment opportunities for Indigenous TAFE graduates when compared to other Indigenous people; - somewhat more Indigenous respondents indicated they were looking for full-time work than did non-Indigenous graduates; - relatively low levels of institutional recognition of prior learning for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous graduates; - a relatively higher proportion of Indigenous graduates who indicated they undertook their course of study for 'personal development' reasons; - a higher likelihood for Indigenous graduates to have received some form of support from an employer or business during the final semester of study; and - nearly half of the non-Indigenous graduates were undertaking further study at the time of the survey. The survey shows that while it is certainly useful, a TAFE qualification does not provide a guarantee of a job for Indigenous people or anyone else. Though the chances of employment increase, there is still a marked lag in Indigenous employment in comparison to the experience of non-Indigenous graduates. Policy makers will need to have a much better understanding of the individual factors (and their interplay) that are relevant to not only the successful completion of TAFE courses but the employment outcomes of the individuals involved in order to address this issue. Survey instruments such as the Graduate Outcomes Technical and Further Education Australia 1995 Survey will be useful in that regard but cannot provide all the answers. One factor that needs to be better understood is the role of employer support in TAFE completion. The survey data suggest the possibility of a link between support and educational success. Policy makers searching for approaches to increasing the success of Indigenous TAFE students would benefit from additional insight into the various forms of support currently available to employed Indigenous students in urban, rural and remote areas. One of the most visible differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous TAFE graduates was the emphasis placed on TAFE as an avenue for personal development. The educational interests and aspirations of Indigenous people are diverse, and that diversity could well create new opportunities to encourage Indigenous participation in education. In the educational policy arena it may well be worth adapting the focus of outreach activities for some segments of the Indigenous community to highlight not jobs, but personal development. The study indicates that unemployed Indigenous TAFE graduates are more likely to remain in the labour force, searching for work, than their non-Indigenous counterparts. There is clearly a solid interest on the part of unemployed graduates in employment and, though their numbers are small, labour market programs targeting this group might have a higher probability of succeeding

Educational 'failure' and educational 'success' in an Aboriginal community

This paper is an exploration of the interaction of Aboriginal people with the Western system of education in the remote community of Maningrida in north-central Arnhem Land. Maningrida Community Education Centre is a government facility comprising the hub school in Maningrida and 13 homeland centre schools. In August 1997 it employed over 60 staff. The enrolment figures for both the hub school and the homeland centre schools indicated a total of 557 students in August of 1997; only about 12 students are non-Aboriginal. As in many Aboriginal communities, the school is perceived as one of the most significant institutions, yet there is anxiety over the degree to which education is succeeding or failing in Maningrida. The paper argues that Aboriginal people in the Maningrida region hold a far more complex understanding of education than is often assumed. Their participation in education is structured by a range of particular interests and desires. To interpret the interaction of Aboriginal people with educational institutions in terms of failure is to fundamentally misunderstand the social process of education in this community. The nature of educational 'failure' Many of the theoretical approaches to educational 'failure' are problematic in that they are based - to greater or lesser degrees - on the assumption that Aboriginal people are largely reactive rather than active participants in their interaction with Western education. This paper attempts to show that the phenomenon of 'failure' is more powerfully interpretable if the active role of Aboriginal people in the educational system is emphasised, if their intentions, goals and desires are considered as part of the social process of which the school is but one part. It argues that the daily engagement of Aboriginal people in Maningrida with the institutions of Western education is constructed, negotiated, interpreted and enacted through four prominent cultural themes: autonomy, shame, sharing, and care-taking. Education: what do people want? Assessing the success or failure of education in Maningrida or any other Aboriginal community according to traditional performance measures such as student attendance, retention and national performance tests masks some subtle and important successes of education. Aboriginal people value Western education but they interpret and use the school in ways that fit their specific needs and their perceptions of themselves, their community and their relationship to the world outside. From this perspective, Western education has proven highly successful. Aboriginal people appropriate the aspects of Western education they need to and ignore it when it does not suit them. What they desire of education is quite different from what the Western institution expects. I would argue that what they want from education can be categorised in four ways: cultural competence, cultural maintenance, material resources and social resources. Policy implications Many Aboriginal people, while admitting some degree of ambivalence about Western education, still believe traditional Western outcomes are important. While I have attempted to show that it should not be assumed education is failing, there are several things that could be done in an attempt to increase student participation, retention, community involvement and the like. Specific policy recommendations include the following: To resuscitate the Community Education Centre vision; promote the coordination of schools and community services; develop training programs for school council members; devolve responsibility for school year and school day scheduling to school councils; and base school funding on numbers of school-age children, not on enrolment or attendance. In developing policy to address these issues, it is important to keep in mind the aspects of education that Aboriginal people value which are not necessarily the intended outcomes of the Western educational system. Similarly, policy should strive to fit with the, sometimes unexpected, realities of life in Indigenous communities

Post-compulsory education and training for Indigenous Australians

There exists in Australia a significant tension between the nature and definition of government goals of education, which are substantially economic, and the essentially social educational goals of Indigenous people. This paper addresses those tensions as they relate to post-compulsory education. It begins with a depiction of findings from the first national survey of Indigenous people pertaining to levels of qualification, desires for further education, and preferred institutions for education and training. The paper then turns to an analysis of the economic and social tensions that have resulted from increasing economic rationalism in education, and explores three prominent economically-based education goals: the development of human capital, increased educational efficiencies and 'enhanced' outcomes. The conflict between these and a range of Indigenous cultural assumptions and practices are then examined. The paper closes with discussion of the policy challenges inherent in attempting to find a balance between the economic imperatives of government and culturally-based Indigenous educational goals

Community involvement in education: An exploration of American Indian education policy and implications for Australia

Indigenous education policy has long emphasised the need to increase the involvement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents and community members in local education. Yet attempts to increase involvement invariably raise important questions about the nature of the traditional Western educational model and its relevance to Indigenous communities. This paper represents an effort to contribute to the ongoing discussions of how best to increase parent and community involvement while insuring community relevance. While the ultimate focus remains on Indigenous education in Australia, the paper is an exploratory one and draws on the experiences of American Indian communities in the United States that are facing similar educational issues. The paper provides an historical overview of Indian education policy, a brief case study of an Indian school, and details two promising approaches to building parental and community involvement in Indian schools that could be adapted to the Australian context

Final Report to the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust Advisory Committee: Options for Education and Training

Final Report to the Warlpiri Education and Training Trust Advisory Committee: Options for Education and Training, by R.G. Schwab, 15 September 2006. A comprehensive report exploring a variety of options for remote education and training