Families

[On-screen text: Families]

[On-screen text: Merle Miller, Yorta Yorta, Wiradjuri, Victorian Aboriginal Education Association Inc]

Merle Miller: When you talk about conversation and you talk about Koori community, Aboriginal community. It’s not just mum and dad and sometimes it's not even mum and dad. So it's got to be inclusive of, you know, our kinship structure is pretty big. I know in my case with, I go to school with my daughter for my granddaughter I go for my cousin's kids. You know, if family needs you there.

So it's not just mum, dad or the carer. It's Nan, Pop, Aunty, Uncle could even be cousin, sister, brother. All of those have impacts and social interaction concerns about our kid’s education. And if there's an opportunity to bring them in to talk about their experiences, that allows the school the opportunity to think, okay, maybe these are other things we need to work on not what's happening right now with these kids. But there are past things that have happened that we can work on to help fix for these kids, for our kids.

[On-screen text: Chris Bush, Head of Student Voice and Leadership, University High School]

Chris Bush: For our families and our community our campfire conversation gave us a chance to, to meet them, to learn about their histories and about their current situations and hopes for their young people. I was really touched when families were so happy that we'd organised Indigenous catering from Mabu Mabu. It's really important that the campfire conversations are welcoming to the students as well as their families, because we know as educators that it's not just the students and the teachers that lead to great educational outcomes.

It's when the families are involved because that really important partnership. So by having the student’s parents, guardians, families present, it means that all members of their family feel listened to and empowered and involved in their child's educational outcomes. And that wouldn't be possible if it was just the students. We need their families involved as well so that we can walk the journey together.

[On-screen text: Colleen Garner, Mara, Koorie Education Coordinator, Outer East, DE]

Colleen Garner: Our families like to come together and they like to meet each other, and especially for our families in the Outer East. They are quite dispersed. We don't have like strong pockets of Aboriginal families, so they really enjoyed that connection of coming together and meeting with eachother. And we saw relationships being built with different stakeholders that were attending different campfires. For our families and the community, it was really about building those relationships, whether it be just within their own school community or with the external stakeholders. And for that connection to happen, it was just really powerful.

I recently had just attended one and what I really enjoyed about that last campfire was that it was whole groups of family coming. It wasn't just one parent or just a student, it was mum, dad, grandparent, children, and it was a really big coming together. And also to have a lot of dads and their voices heard because quite often it is us women that do a lot of the talking for our children in education, so it was really lovely to have the dads come together.

So I think it really is around building those relationships and for schools to understand the wealth of knowledge that they might already have within their own school setting, that they can engage with and do some wonderful work.

Relationships were built within their own school community, but also with external stakeholders. We had some of our Elders come to the campfire. So, for all of those different relationships to build, for schools to understand that they've got some wonderful families with a lot of knowledge that they can also tap into, which will only help progress all of the work that is happening at a local level.

[On-screen text: Stephanie Raike, Head of Wellbeing and Support, Elisabeth Murdoch College]

Stephanie Raike: One of the other stories or themes that came through was talking about different experiences. So, we didn't just have students from Elisabeth Murdoch College as part of our campfire. Some families brought other family members as well, and they spoke about the differences between schools and that it, it sometimes depended whether there was a passionate person, Indigenous or non-Indigenous at the school as to where Koori education engagement got to in that school and that they really wanted that to not be something that, there shouldn’t be differences or that level of difference across schools, that they wanted the education department to lead a level of expectation and provide the funds and the resources and the training and everything that's needed to meet those expectations. It shouldn't even be expectations, those minimum sort of things that should happen in a school. They want to be able to turn around to another school and say, you know, does this happen at your school?

That we're given a platform to really share really big aspirations, really big hopes and dreams, not just about a little change but about big changes that, you know, they spoke about my kids, you know, when my family come through school and for those young people and their family hearing that, you know, their older generations hearing that, but then also they're talking about the next generation to come, they're thinking about how can they leave this place better for the ones that come after them and I think that's what it meant to students, a chance to make a change.

I think campfires mean for families and communities that someone wants to listen to them and I think, you know, the feedback we got around a little bit of distrust in systems and feedback mechanisms, I'm hoping that these campfires are a chance to address those and to demonstrate that, you know, the Department of Education and the schools are listening and that it's not just gone, gone somewhere and done something with it. We're providing those loops and schools have been able to enact some of those changes and that some of those feedback on the ground and provide feedback to the communities basically in real time. We heard you and we've done this thing and the other departments got that chance as well.

So I think for families and communities, it's given an opportunity to be connected to the schools, to be connected to the education system and you know, for some families and the communities, maybe they not only never had the chance to have these voices, but they never had the chance to be part of a system that it was better than they had.

[On-screen text: Zack Haddock, Yorta Yorta, Executive Director, Koorie Outcomes Division, DE]

Zack Haddock: My personal hopes for Koori education as a father with children and as somebody who's worked in this department for a very long time and a consumer of the education system as well, I might add, that we get an opportunity to leave it in a much better state than it was. I don't want the mistakes that I went through that I have seen my children go through, that my grandparents and my parents have gone through, going back for as long as I can remember, to be repeated. And I know we've got some significant goodwill and the inclusion of our voices, our Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander voices. If we are genuine and we continue to listen to that, it’s going to make sure that that doesn't happen.

And then we're going to have that next generation of leaders really strong culturally, really strong in their identity and academically smart as a whip. It's going to carry that next generation into the future.

[On-screen text: To hear more about what was shared, access the full report: www.vic.gov.au/marrung]

[End transcript]