Landmark funding agreement settles indigenous schools claim

ABORIGINAL leaders from the remote Northern Territory community of Wadeye have signed a historic deal with the federal government.

Tobias Ngambe signs the agreement

ABORIGINAL leaders from the remote Northern Territory community of Wadeye have signed a historic agreement with the federal government that marks the resolution of a long-running human rights claim that established remote indigenous schools were chronically underfunded.

The former co-principal of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Thamarrurr School, Tobias Nganbe, signed the agreement with School Education Minister Peter Garrett in Melbourne yesterday, where they committed to work together so "every child has a chance at a good and strong future".

Wadeye community leaders lodged a racial discrimination action in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in 2007, complaining that an agreement that set out funding arrangements for OLSH and several other ex-mission schools in the Territory guaranteed the schools were funded in "a different, and less favourable way" than mainstream schools.

The claim followed initial findings from a landmark report by academic John Taylor from the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy and Research, which found that for every dollar spent on the average child attending school in the Territory, only 26c was spent on a child in Wadeye. The report was later amended based on extra data provided by the Territory, making the figure 47c.

Between 1979 and mid-2007, the Territory received federal funding for ex-mission schools on a per capita basis.

But the Territory funded the Catholic Education Office for the schools on the basis of attendance, denying it critical resourcing.

OLSH Thamarrurr became a mainstream Catholic school in mid-2007. Since then, it has been able to access mainstream funding streams provided to Catholic schools around the nation, gaining it many millions in extra funds.

Mr Nganbe said yesterday the agreement with the federal and Territory governments gave his community hope. "This is something we have worked so hard for. It's a very exciting and joyful event," he said.

Mr Garrett, who has been in negotiations with the Wadeye community for the past 18 months, said yesterday's agreement was "the turning of a page".

Melbourne firm Arnold Bloch Leibler, together with Darwin lawyers Bowden McCormack, acted in the human rights claim on a pro bono basis.

Lawyer Sean Bowden said Wadeye's school had undergone a transformation as extra funding began to flow to the school.

"There is life in the school," Mr Bowden said "There is a determination amongst the school leadership to provide the best education that they can."

The agreement provides $8 million in additional funding for education in Wadeye on top of recurrent funding.