Aboriginal scholar ‘will lead nation’

A blueprint for best practice in teaching Aboriginal schoolchildren will be launched today by Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Lowanna Moran became the first student to complete both Year 12 and tertiary study with the AIEF’s support. Picture: Hollie Adams

A blueprint for best practice in teaching Aboriginal schoolchildren will be launched today by Tony Abbott who believes an ­Australian Indigenous Education Foundation scholarship student will one day have his job as Prime Minister.

The foundation, which funds 469 scholarship students from 230 communities across the nation, will today release a practical guide intended to assist schools to build a successful indigenous education program.

ANZ chairman David Gonski and the Prime Minister’s indigenous Advisory Council chairman Warren Mundine — who are both patrons of the foundation — will be present at the report’s launch alongside a bevy of business leaders including Qantas executive Olivia Wirth and Credit Suisse chair John O’Sullivan.

“Warren Mundine believes that one day a child in the AIEF program will be Prime Minister,” Mr Abbott will say today.

“When it happens, Warren, Andrew Penfold (the foundation’s executive director) and I ... will be in the front rows of the public ­gallery,” he will say.

The AIEF report will shed light on strategies which have earned the foundation a 92 per cent retention and Year 12 completion rate for its scholarship students and a 97 per cent tertiary retention and completion rate.

“This is a foundation that seeks to lift our vision about what we expect for young indigenous Australians,” Mr Abbott will say.

“In every field of endeavour, we must yearn for the day when ­success for indigenous students is so normal that it is no longer ­remarkable.”

Lowanna Moran became the first student to complete both Year 12 and tertiary study with the foundation’s support when she graduated with a combined Bachelor of Fine Arts and Secondary Education from the University of NSW last year. She now works as an art teacher in Sydney’s west.

“I wanted to become a teacher because I wanted to have an ability to enhance the lives of other ­people and I thought the best way to do that would be through education,” Ms Moran said.