The History of Western Cape College

Western Cape College was established as a strategic response to the poor education outcomes for Indigenous students across the Western Cape. These outcomes were not unusual to the region; they reflected the national picture. Data from across Australia indicated that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students were achieving dramatically below non-Indigenous state benchmarks on measures such as attendance, retention, completion and achievement.

The story of Western Cape College is an interesting one with a series of events driving its formation. Primarily, the poor education outcomes for the Indigenous students in Queensland prompted Education Queensland to develop policy initiatives to address obstacles preventing Indigenous children from achieving success. Education Queensland's subsequent initiatives, Partners for Success and Strategic Plan QSE 2010 introduced a mechanism for the Principals in the Northern Western Cape region, from Weipa North, Jessica Point, Mapoon and Koolkan Aurukun to work collaboratively to address the learning outcomes experienced by their Indigenous students.

Concurrently, in March 2001 the Western Cape Communities Co-existence Agreement was signed between Comalco Aluminium Ltd., the Aboriginal communities and traditional owners of Western Cape York Peninsula and the State of Queensland. This agreement commits Comalco to:

"The development and adoption of employment and training policies, strategies and programs in respect of the Weipa operations aimed at: developing employment for local Aboriginal persons; having local employees; and increasing the number of Aboriginal employees who are local Aboriginal people consistent with the basic principle that Comalco employs and treats employees on the basis of ability, performance and qualifications and Comalco's needs."

This agreement, combined with the urgency to improve Indigenous education outcomes was the impetus for the four Western Cape schools to establish a cohesive educational strategy that served the educational needs and interests of individual communities while providing a consistent approach to achieving long term improvement of educational outcomes for students. This new approach to education services would enable the schools to meet their responsibilities under the agreement in terms of increasing work-ready student numbers.

Western Cape College was created in 2001, with the official launch on January 1 2002 by the Minister for Education. The focus of the College has been on achieving organisational effectiveness and individual teacher accountability as the fundamental driver of improved education, training and employment outcomes. As the College has grown there has been increased focus on pedagogy and curriculum innovations, traditional responses to improving poor education outcomes. This has been successful due to the strong foundations created by successful organisational effectiveness models and a commitment to accountability.