Federal aid sought as WA Kimberley school attendance rates plummet

High school attendance rates in predominantly Indigenous high schools in WA’s Kimberley region have fallen to as low as 10 per cent, prompting fresh calls for a federal intervention.

Anthony Albanese and WA Premier Mark McGowan in Fitzroy Crossing in January. Picture: PMO

High school attendance rates in predominantly Indigenous high schools in Western Australia’s Kimberley region have fallen to as low as 10 per cent, prompting fresh calls for a federal intervention.

New data shows a pronounced drop in year 12 attendance rates across high schools in Halls Creek, Fitzroy Crossing, Wyndham, Derby and Kununurra between 2021 and 2022.

Fitzroy Valley District High School recorded an attendance rate of just 10 per cent for year 12, down from 14.6 per cent the previous year, while Halls Creek District High School’s attendance rate for the same year fell from 30 per cent to 11.9 per cent. Both schools have almost entirely Indigenous student populations.

While the WA government says the Covid outbreak of early 2022 affected attendance during the period, upper house Liberal MP Neil Thomson – who represents the Mining and Pastoral Region that includes the Kimberley – said he had been told by people on the ground that attendance rates had not recovered and in some instances had worsened.

He said the figures, tabled in the WA parliament last week, should be enough to cause the federal government to step in. “The commonwealth needs to take a much stronger role in our education system in the north, particularly in our remotest regions, because clearly the state doesn’t seem to be up to the job,” he said.

The Albanese government needed to use every lever available to it, he said, including “much more active management around the use of welfare” and family interventions, to help improve attendance rates. “It is vital we intervene on behalf of these children because we cannot allow this to continue,” he said.

The Kimberley has been plagued in recent years by a sharp increase in juvenile crime. Break-ins and car thefts have spiked, and several police cars have been rammed by children driving ­stolen vehicles.

WA police last February launched Operation Regional Shield in an effort to address those increasing crime rates, with the program – which has involved bringing officers from Perth to regional towns in the Kimberley and the Pilbara – to continue until the end of this year.

Bunuba elder and Fitzroy Crossing resident Joe Ross told The Australian the low year 12 attendance figures were unsurprising. The Kimberley’s schools, he said, had long struggled to adjust to the needs of the region’s children and attract teaching talent.

 

Many of the students come from broken and impoverished families with non-supportive parents, while the region was still “riding the legacy” of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, he said.

Alcohol restrictions were introduced in Fitzroy Crossing in 2007, and Mr Ross said the schools were only just starting to take in younger children, who were responding well to ­education.

There are also four local languages spoken in the area, with English a second language to many.

“People have to understand what the issues here are. The system itself has not adapted to who they are trying to teach,” he said.

Two of Mr Ross’s grandchildren attend Fitzroy Valley, and he says they had had to become resilient to the disruptive behaviours of other students.

“They are eager and want to learn, but they get caught up in the mayhem of children who are dealing with trauma and issues at home,” he says.

Much of the Kimberley is now also dealing with the aftermath of last month’s record flooding.