The Strategic Results Projects

What were they?
What were the results?
What can we learn from them?

What were they?

In December 1997, the Australian Government launched a series of Strategic Results Projects (SRPs) related to education and training for Indigenous students.

Around $13 million was provided to State and Territory government and non-government preschool, school, and VET sectors for a range of short (one year), sharply-focused initiatives related to literacy, numeracy, vocational education and other areas of education and training delivery.

Those submitting for projects were asked to address the question — What changes to education and student support delivery practices will result in improved Indigenous student learning outcomes within a relatively short period of time?

There were 83 SRPs, focusing on a wide range of topics (and, frequently, more than one) including:

• home to school transition
• transition from the primary to secondary years
• supporting students in the secondary years
• older students re-entering education and training
• student mobility
• building skills in early childhood education
• literacy in Standard Australian English
• Indigenous languages
• using information and communication technologies
• numeracy
• arts education
• vocational education and training (VET) in schools
• VET in Colleges, and
• training in the justice system.

They ranged in scale from small single-site operations to large systemic initiatives. Thirty-one projects operated at more than one site (approximately 320 sites across Australia in total) ranging from inner urban areas of capital cities to remote outback areas. Approximately 3800 students were directly involved.

The work was not conducted in ‘exceptional circumstances’, meaning carefully controlled and favourable situations. It was carried out in ‘normal’ preschools, schools and training institutions, under conventional conditions.

The strategies adopted could not be generally described as innovative or unusual, although, in context, they may have been both. The results were achieved by people working more intensively with strategies that are widely familiar, that could be described as conventional good practice and that are readily portable to other similar contexts.

One of the initiative’s distinctive features was that each project was required to set targets for achievement, and to establish baseline data from which results could be measured. Each project reported in these terms.

What were the results?

• The general objective of the SRPs was achieved. Providers of education and training did, in fact, ‘demonstrate that improving Indigenous student learning outcomes can occur in a relatively short space of time through concerted efforts’, across a very broad range of projects in varied locations and contexts.

At the time of writing the report final performance data were available for 60 of the projects. Forty-one of these (68 percent) achieved or exceeded their targets. Eleven (18 percent) either achieved or exceeded one or more of their targets but not the complete set, or achieved them at one or more sites but not at one or more other sites. Project work was continuing at six of these sites, with the expectation that further gains will be made.

Eight of the 60 projects (13 percent) did not achieve their contracted goals, but five of these achieved what they actually set out to do (e.g. the development of courses, programs or teaching materials).

• The results were achieved in areas closely aligned with national targets for Indigenous education. The major emphases were: improved attendance rates, improved grade progression and completion rates; improved rates of secondary completion and articulation to further study or training; participation and completion rates in vocational education and training; and acquisition of skills in literacy in Standard Australian English and numeracy.

Levels of achievement were evenly spread across these topics; that is, there were no particular areas of success or failure. Location factors appear to have had little impact on levels of project achievement, although there were a small number of cases reported where students at more remote sites in the same project did not achieve the same level of improvement as students at sites that were less remote.

• The project performance targets ranged in levels of ambition. The largest group, however, established benchmarks for improvement in performance or participation which were in line with local, state/territory or national rates for non-Indigenous students, reflecting the core goals of the national Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy.
  
• There were many project outcomes unrecorded by the formal performance indicators. They are very diverse, but their dominant theme was the evident growth in self-confidence and engagement among the students involved.

The central messages

• Through concerted effort, it is possible to significantly improve Indigenous student learning outcomes.
  
• The SRP's results were achieved by people working more intensively with strategies that are widely familiar, could be described as conventional good practice, and are readily portable to other similar contexts.
  
• The things that did matter were clear targets and monitoring processes, adequate resources but, above all, a firm belief in the prospect of success and a will to make it occur.

The full report is available online at the Australian Curriculum Studies Association website.