BACKGROUND

Purnululu School was established in 1991 to provide an educational service for the traditional owners of Purnululu National Park and adjacent lands. Purnululu Aboriginal Corporation is the governing body of the educational service. The total population of adult members represented by Purnululu Aboriginal Corporation is in excess of 400. These people reside throughout the East Kimberley in major centres such as Halls Creek and Kununurra as well as smaller communities such as Kawarre, Wurreranginy, Yarrunga, Rukuny Ngiliny Anjaru, Kartang Rija and Kayirrewarreny.

Traditional owners sought an educational service that would support and reinforce their values but provide their kids with opportunities (knowledge/skills) which will allow their children to take-over: that is, a service that did not rip the social fabric apart and leave the kids dead before the age of 30. A feasibility study was conducted in 1988 by Ngurnipali Ngurnarri Education Consultants.

For the adult traditional owners of Purnululu National Park and their children, commitment to family and land are core element of personal identity. They actively maintain contact with their family and with their land. In this region, accessing family and land means movement, and it takes a number of forms. Curriculum developments must take account of the movement of the student group if it is to provide access, participation, completion and achievement.

It addition to the significance of family and land, residential patterns, language diversity and the roles of informal and formal learning environments have been and continue to be important issues for Purnululu School in developing an appropriate school based curriculum. The curriculum that has evolved over the past 9 years can be best described as a bicultural curriculum with a pluralist society focus.

It is critical that students have access to information and the corpus of knowledge that are part of and valued by the societies in which they are located. Students must have access to the language(s) that communicate this information. To ensure that students have equitable access to the knowledge, skills and values of their culture the school developed a multilingual educational policy that recognises Kija and Kriol as two of the languages used for communication (Djaru, Walmajarri and Miriuwung are also used). In addition the students require access to the knowledge, skills and values bound within the English language – the language of power in Australia. The School also recognises that as with English, Kija and Kriol are dynamic languages that exhibit the characteristics of all evolving languages including the presence of dialects.

 Kriol, Kija and English are taught as discrete subjects. As with other groups in other societies, the level of literacy (reading/writing) in each language varies for Indigenous students. This is related predominantly to whether the need for a writing system to communicate has been established as well as access to quality formal language learning programs which actively promote the development and understanding of each language.

The following describes the nature and timing of the sequential multilingual educational service implemented by the School. This model is sometimes known as the Maintenance Heritage Model of Bilingual/Multilingual Schooling.
 

Age group	Language of Instruction	Formal language programs	Language Awareness Programs
Preschool (Yr 1 minus 2 years)	Kriol and Kija	Kriol	Kija, English
Yr 1 minus 1	Kriol and Kija	Kriol	Kija , English
Yr 1	Kriol and Kija	Kriol	Kija, English
Yr 2	Kriol, Kija , English	Kriol, Kija, English	other e.g. Indonesian, Italian
Yr 3 –7	Kriol, Kija, English	Kriol, Kija, English	as above
Yr 8 – 10	Kriol, English	Kriol, Kija, English

Purnululu educational service acknowledges that there is limited if any material available which is suitable for use as assessment tools for this target group in their acquisition and learning of all three languages. Until the school can develop assessment tools which are linguistically principled, explicit, criterion-referenced and inform different types of assessment, including diagnostic, formative and summative assessment the following assessment procedures are used to gather data for evaluation of the provider’s language programs and student performance. Formal testing instruments are not implemented until a child had reached 9 years of age.
 

Type of assessment	Kija	Kriol	English
informal and formal observation of achievement of specified language tasks	X	X	X
Purnululu School Oral Inventory	X	X	X
Neale Analysis of Reading administered to students in 3rd year of English language program and 5th year of English language program			X
Orchid Series English Language Tests  Series A administered to students in their 3rd year of English language program  Series B administered to students in their 7th and 8th year of English language program			X
Purnululu School Base Level Reading Lists	X	X	X
Purnululu School Base Level Spelling Lists	X	X	X

The School’s language policy and strategies reflect the families’ wish and the National Language and Literacy Policy 1991 Goal 3

Students who speak a contemporary and/or traditional indigenous languages as their first language(s) have a right to access formal school programs in those languages for the same reasons English Language programs are developed for students whose first language is English. Through appropriate curriculum development, Purnululu School actively strives to meet that challenge.

Purnululu Aboriginal Corporation believes that the relatively high attendance and participation rates recorded by Purnululu Educational Service in our preschool, preprimary and primary areas (1992-1997) are due to community access and participation and the long serving staff of the service. Of the six current Aboriginal Teachers, four have worked full time in the educational service for the last 4 years. The three non-Aboriginal teachers have worked full time in the educational service for 6 years or more. The level of community participation and continuity of staffing provides opportunities for effective implementation and evaluation of initiatives. Student learning outcomes can only continue to improve if the school can sustain this environment.

Issues in sustaining the effective progress of our educational service have been : the amelioration of the existing difficult political, economic and physical conditions in which students, staff and community members are living and working; and increased access to a variety of educational services. The following policies were introduced to assist address these issues.

• All capital works will be constructed by members of the Corporation unless otherwise agreed. Appropriate expertise will be sought to assist family members in capital works programmes. Appropriate networking mechanisms will be used to ensure the highest long term benefit to the educational service and corporation. Alternative waste water and power supplies will be installed to ensure environmentally sound practices . (1988)
• Teaching staff ratio to be maintained at 2 Aboriginal staff to 1 Non-Aboriginal staff . As student numbers increase the school will aim to increase this to 3:1. (1992)
• The student/teacher ratio in a ‘class’ is be no greater than 10:1

• An independent educational service
• Approved authority is Purnululu Aboriginal Corporation

• Located in Kimberley Region of Western Australia, Australia, closest Supermarket is located in Kununurra (250kms)

• All students are Indigenous Australians

• Includes a registered preschool, kindergarten, preprimary, primary and lower secondary
• Purnululu’s preschool, kindergarten, preprimary, primary and lower secondary school services receive government funds
• Purnululu Aboriginal Corporation acknowledges and believes in appropriate, equitable and transparent educational and financial accountability measures to students, families and funding bodies.
• Education is not synonymous with schooling
• Schooling is a subset of education
• Schooling is not synonymous with English Literacy Learning
• Australia’s Indigenous Education Strategic Initiatives Program which implements the National Aboriginal Education Policy was never intended to be synonymous with English Literacy Learning but an initiative which increased the Educational Outcomes of Indigenous Students
• Educational Outcomes are not synonymous with attendance, enrolment, retention and completion rates.

• The following subjects are offered to primary and secondary students

• Purnululu School has a comprehensive multilingual language policy in place
• Literacy is the knowledge of writing systems (of any language)
• Literacy is not synonymous with English Language Literacy
• Kriol is the mothertongue or first/home/L1/target language of the students

• Kija is an additional language (It is one of the indigenous languages that the families identify with politically economically and socially. That is, it is sociolinguistically similar to the first language and culture of the students and is a language that is used in the immediate environment of the students for 30% of the day )
• English is a foreign language (It is a language of the western world that the families identify as foreign politically, economically and socially. That is, it is sociolinguistically very different to the first language and culture of the student. It is a language that is not used in the immediate environment of the students for more than 10% of the day

• English language is a subject. Expresssions such as English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) describe the language ecologies/environments and consequently implies appropriate methodology/pedagogy/teaching strategies to be used in achieving English language outcomes.
• Kriol is a language of instruction for all students
• Kriol is taught as a discrete language subject from pre-school to Year 10
• Kija is a language of instruction for all students
• Kija is taught as a discrete language subject from third year of primary school to Year 10
• English is a language of instruction for all students
• English is formally introduced in the school curriculum as a discrete language subject at the beginning of the third year of primary school.
• Numeracy is synonymous with Western mathematics. It is not synonymous with understanding Western Mathematical concepts in the English language. In most western countries the language of instruction for mathematics is the home language. That is, in France, French is the language of instruction and the concepts of western mathematics are taught in French. In Germany western maths is taught in German. In Spain western mathematics is taught in Spanish. In Italy, western maths is taught in Italian. ….and so we can go on. At Purnululu School western maths concepts are taught in the home language of the students….that is, Kriol. Sometimes as happens in teaching subject content there may not be a term in the home language which leads to the introduction of a new word in the home language (Kriol) which has been borrowed from another language (English). This phenomenon occurs in the dynamics of all languages. Example of where this has happened in the English language are the words ‘technology, opera, ballet, Linux’.
• Standardised testing instruments which use Kriol as the language of instruction are not available to the students for assessing learning Kriol language, Kija language and western mathematical concepts.
• National Benchmark assessment tools and Western Australian standardised assessment tools assume that all students have English as their first language and have been in a schooling environment which uses English as the language of instruction and is taught as a discrete subject from the first year of primary school. This is not the case at Purnululu School

• Purnululu School has three categories of enrolments, not all of whom attract funding from per capita programs . These categories are functions of residential patterns of students and their families.

Staff Person Qualities

Academic

• Sound knowledge of the range of informal and formal teaching strategies used across the curriculum areas
• Competent at lesson planning and programming
• Sound knowledge of content area in Western Mathematics ( K-6 NSW Curriculum)

• Sound knowledge of traditional and contemporary educational theories/theorists influencing teaching of, in and about languages. (psycho-cognitive, multiliteracies, semiotics, sociolinguistic, )
• Working knowledge of National Profiles

• Doesn’t support English language imperialism but acknowledges that one of the dialects of English in Australia is the language of power and privilege (commonly referred to Standard Australian English) and understands the implications for the student group if they are not given access to this dialect.
• Acknowledges that all people including students bring knowledge to the learning environment
• Willing to learn new rules on how knowledge is owned, gained, used and publicly announced (published) e.g. no audio/visuals taken for personal use until formally agreed upon by P.A.C. Videos, photographs and other art media , like oral and writing systems, are media for making public announcements. The rules for using these media are determined by the students and their families.

• Prepared to live in an area where ‘basic shelter’ infrastructure is provided i.e. running water, ablutions and limited access to 240V power, that mirrors infrastructure available to students and their families. Strategies to maintain a reasonable level of health and hygiene within this framework remain the responsibility of the individual and community. (Until the rest of Australia comes to the party)
• Understands that teaching is a vocation , not a job, in this situation. (Not a lot of private time while on site)
• Strong sense of humour (the author of this is known for not having one!!)
• Self reliant and physically fit
• Enthusiastic, creative and adventurous