Groote Eylandt schools collaboration fit for Sydney’s King’s

Prestigious The King’s School in Sydney’s west has signed a memorandum of understanding with Groote Eylandt and Bickerton Island Primary College Aboriginal Corporation.

Student Yvette Wurramara and King’s head Tony George. Picture: Britten Syd Andrews

Earlier this year when prestigious The King’s School representatives asked Anindilyakwa woman Ida Mamarika what she wanted for the school her community was building in a remote corner of the Northern Territory, Ms Mamarika answered quietly.

“Some books?” she said.

Then they began talking cultural exchanges, language exchanges, staff development. Perhaps even a whole library.

On Tuesday night in Alyangula on Groote Eylandt, 650km from Darwin in the Gulf of Carpentaria, King’s signed a memorandum of understanding with Groote Eylandt and Bickerton Island Primary College Aboriginal Corporation. The agreement will see the two schools from opposite ends of the education spectrum work together.

Anindilyakwa man and GEBIPCAC director Scotty Wurramarrba said the collaboration was crucial to turning students’ education around on the island.

“It’s the future of our younger generations to come,” Mr Wurramarrba said. “Education first and everything else comes after that, and we are teaming up with the best, the elite of the elite.”

GEBIPCAC has a 10-year plan to take over governance of all education in the Groote Archipelago, which includes building an independent boarding school on Bickerton Island, due to open in 2025.

GEBIPCAC education manager Josie Skelton said the move to independence was a necessary one, driven by the community.

“It was clear the government schools didn’t cater for our kids,” Ms Skelton said. “We had an ­average attendance of 19 per cent – that amounts to seven years of schooling these kids would lose. We had to do something.”

Last week as part of the NT Schools in Crisis series, exclusive data analysis by The Australian revealed all four schools in the Groote Eylandt archipelago were severely underfunded. Angurugu School received $2.29m less than what was reported on My School in 2021; Alyarrmandumanja Umbakumba School received $1.42m less, Alyangula School $2.61m less, and Milyakburra School $364,000 less.

Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said schools across the Northern Territory were the most underfunded in Australia, receiving only 80 per cent of their full and fair funding level.

Ms Skelton said The King’s School fit with GEBIPCAC’s overarching ideal of continuous community consultation, and the Sydney private school’s support and guidance would be beneficial.

The King’s School principal Tony George said although the two schools were at opposite ends of the spectrum, they had more in common than it might seem. “We both require an agile and bespoke approach to meet the needs of our individual communities – something a public system can’t do because it has to go through the bureaucracy,” Mr George said.

He said GEBIPCAC’s bilingual curriculum was a drawcard for King’s, and he hoped they could help them take it global. “What I’m seeing here at Groote is one of the most sophisticated expressions of education in Australia, it’s extraordinary,” he said. “We want to work with them, if we can, on that so that we can develop an entirely new approach to education in communities.”

Mr George said the link would be beneficial to students at both schools, and he hoped it would build empathy in King’s students. “We want our kids to be humble, we want our kids to engage meaningfully with an attitude of gratitude in society, so the only way to do that is to get them out into it,” he said.