Collaboration between schools and the Indigenous community plays a key role in Indigenous students continuing their education, says Charles Sturt University (CSU) School of Education professor, Stephen Kemmis. 

Together with senior lecturer Ros Brennan-Kemmis and Indigenous research fellow Marianne Atkinson, Professor Kemmis will present a keynote address, Indigenous Education: A Collective Task for All Australians, at the National Rural Education conference in Fremantle, Western Australia on Wednesday 2 June from 1pm. 

“It is about the need for coordinated responses to issues for Indigenous people – not just from schools – but from other agencies as well,” Professor Kemmis said. 

“If positive work carried out by such schools and agencies isn’t valued and ‘owned’ by the local Indigenous community, young people may be disinclined to stay on in school; with the consequence that they may inherit and continue the social and educational disadvantages suffered by many in the current parent generation of Indigenous Australians.” 

Such outcomes, Professor Kemmis said, include 20 years lower life expectancy for males and females, higher rates of heart disease, lower birth weights, lower incomes, higher unemployment rates and substantially higher rates of domestic violence. 

These social disadvantages, in turn, contribute to poorer educational outcomes in the rising generations of Indigenous children and young people. 

Professor Kemmis is internationally renowned for his social research in education. 

He said all schools need to develop closer relationships with their local Indigenous communities if they are to ensure Indigenous people will see schools as making a real contribution to building the collective capacity, collective efficacy and the social cohesion of communities. 

The National Rural Education conference will be held in the Plympton Room of the Trade Winds Hotel from 11am and will be opened by the Governor of  Western Australia, His Excellency Lieutenant-General John Sanderson AC.