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Whatever
it takes: Encouraging Aboriginal Student Attendance at Salisbury
North R-7 School
by
Julie Murphy, Muriel O'Loughlin, Bronwyn Parkin
Salisbury North R-7 school is a disadvantaged
school in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. There are approximately
400 students, in the school, including a New Arrivals Unit
for English as a second language learners, and up to 60 Aboriginal
students at any one time. Most Aboriginal families in the
school are relatively stable, with strong family links. (In
2001, one senior Aboriginal elder had fourteen grandchildren
in the school.) The principal had a strong history of involvement
in Aboriginal education, and had recruited other educators
experienced with Aboriginal learners. The Aboriginal Education
Worker had worked in the school for some years, and had strong
community links.
As in many Australian schools, the attendance
of some of the Aboriginal students in a few families is a
problem some of the time. Although the school has a strong
and successful literacy program running, if students are not
in the school, teachers can't teach them, so active work had
to be done to improve attendance.
The following is a description of the
Aboriginal Education Team's attendance strategies for one
year, 2001, when the three of us were part of the team at
Salisbury North R-7; Julie a classroom teacher, Muriel the
Aboriginal Education Worker, and Bronwyn the coordinator of
the Indigenous literacy project. Other people involved in
working on attendance were the Aboriginal Education Teacher,
the school principal, the trainee AEW, and the ASSPA Committee.
Some of the identified reasons for absenteeism at Salisbury
North R-7 were:
- no food for breakfast or recess or
lunch
- shopping day once per fortnight when
the social benefits money arrives
- more exciting social business going
on at home
- transience: families moving frequently
between two sites
- run out of clean clothes
- lack of transport for students who
move out of walking distance from school
- avoidance: escaping the stresses and
demands of school by feigning sickness
Listed below are the strategies we consciously
employed to encourage students to come to school. They were
intended to address different reasons for absence, as no one
strategy would work on its own. The role of the Aboriginal
Education Worker in keeping all of this together was crucial.
Strategy 1: no shame
Indigenous students formed a critical
mass of the school population. This, along with their strong
sense of pride and identity affirmed in the school program,
and by the adults with whom they worked, as well as their
community, may have contributed to reasons for students walking
proudly in the school.
Strategy 2: lunch vouchers
If a teacher realised that a child
had come to school without recess or lunch, they filled out
a voucher, the child took it to the canteen, and they were
supplied with a simple sandwich. This system applied to all
children in the school, not just Aboriginal. However, for
some children, the shame of telling the teacher, or taking
a pink voucher to the canteen was enough to prevent them from
using the system. One classroom teacher took the simple step
of filling out lunch order bags with the sandwich order. In
this way, the student could put their name on the bag and
put it in the lunch basket the same as other students and
not look different.
Strategy 3: the Aboriginal Education
pantry
There were always some children who
were too embarrassed to go to the canteen, or to tell their
teacher that they didn't have food. However, the Aboriginal
Education team couldn't use school funds to buy food just
for the Aboriginal students, nor could we work against the
school canteen policy. The issue was always worse just before
payday. So the AEW arranged for a locked cupboard in her room,
and families put together their own bags of food on shopping
day to be stored in that cupboard for their own children,
like a pantry away from home. The AEW could make sure that
the children were fed at school from their shopping bag each
day. (A fridge has now moved into the office, and a microwave
oven is planned.)
Strategy 4: the clothes whip around
The Aboriginal Education Worker,
Muriel, was amazing in the way she could rally community resources.
If a family turned up without sufficient clothing, or a child
was shamed to come into the classroom because they had no
socks, she would disappear and find them somewhere. She could
always find someone who was willing to help out.
Strategy 5: end of term and annual
attendance awards
It was the task of the trainee Aboriginal
Education Worker to get the attendance feedback from the previous
term, and determine the best attenders in each year level
(excluding absences and lateness). These students were presented
with MacDonalds vouchers for them and their family at a special
Aboriginal Education Assembly. The prizes for the annual awards
were more substantial: T-shirts, caps, and books. We think
that trophies similar to a football or netball trophy might
be more valued.
Strategy 6: short term rewards
For some students, old habits of
non-attendance needed to be changed. Rewards were negotiated
with individual students, usually younger students, sometimes
with a system of stickers for each day attended, followed
by a reward at the end of a week of full attendance
One teacher implemented a reward system solely for the Aboriginal
student in her class who had most trouble getting to school.
It was kept in the teacher's desk, and the student marked
herself off each day. After five days attendance in a row,
she would choose a reward. This was then extended to getting
to school more on time. A sign of success was when she began
arriving at school with an absentee note from her mother so
her absences were no longer unexplained.
Strategy 7: feedback to parents
Some parents just didn't realise
how much learning their children are missing. With the trainee
AEW we devised a way of visually representing student lateness,
absences and days attendance, in the form of a pie chart.
After consulting the ASSPA committee on its use, the AEW trialed
the use of the pie chart in conjunction with a face to face
talk with selected parents. The actual number of full days
attended sometimes came as a shock, and brought about short
term change. This Attendance feedback tool, now in a more
sophisticated form, is available on the Aboriginal Education
website www.aboriginaleducation.sa.edu.au/pages/Educators/attendance_retention/.
This link uses data specific to South Australia. A similar
tool is available for others, here on the What Works site.
Go to the What Works tool...
We had our best chances of success when
the classroom teacher also worked at forming good relationships
with the parents and families, rather than leaving this business
to the Aboriginal Education Worker. Then the classroom teacher
and the AEW could work together to determine the best strategy
for talking to parents. Sometimes the chat was more effective
coming from the AEW, sometimes it was the teacher.
Strategy 8: haranguing
Someone has to be the witch! One
of the spin-offs of having such a good relationship with the
Aboriginal students in the school, and their positive self
esteem, was that we could hassle the older students when they
began a pattern of absences before it became entrenched. The
haranguing was carried out by anyone with a good relationship
with the student: peers, teachers, AEW, aunties, cousins.
At the same time, we were very careful about how, when and
whom we harangued. If a student was getting herself up, organising
herself to get to school and often organising siblings as
well, we were not going to worry about her being a little
late! We let her know how admiring we were of the effort.
Strategy 9: pick ups
Sometimes it was strategic to run
around to the child's place and pick them up. This gave them
the message that we were relentless in pursuit of their presence.
Usually the AEW did this, but others also helped. In one instance,
a family of students who had already attended 12 schools in
their Primary school life were picked up and dropped off by
a teacher passing by for a term when they moved yet again,
and we didn't want their Year 7 learning interrupted.
Strategy 10: success in learning
A significant motivator for some
students was success at school. When we began the Deadly Writin',
Readin' and Talkin' Project, using scaffolded literacy pedagogies
of Dr Brian Gray from the University of Canberra, some students
made sense of school learning for the first time, and began
to be successful at reading and writing. One or two chronically
poor attenders began to come regularly. After all, why would
you come daily to a place that reinforced a sense of failure?
It was fundamental that what happened in classroom rewarded
students for getting there, and helped them to form positive
identities about themselves as learners.
None of these strategies worked
all of the time. The problem was never permanently solved.
It required relentless commitment to do whatever it took to
get students into school, then relentless commitment to ensure
that they were successful once they got there. This task was
everybody's business, from the receptionist, to the parents
on canteen, to the classroom teacher. Together we made a difference!
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