Key themes – What we have heard

[On-screen text: Key Themes – What we have heard]

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

Colleen Garner: I think what we were hearing was around what our families and what our students, what their expectations are, around what they want to see in the school. And it could be just even like simple things. It was around, you know, have they got the Aboriginal flag up, the Acknowledgment plaques, have they got artwork and murals and all of those things displayed throughout their school. The other key theme that was really coming through was that we're still experiencing racism our as students are facing that.

So we've still got a bit of work to do around how we address that and educate staff to be able to deal with those conversations. We want to see Aboriginal learning in our curriculum. So we're not seeing enough of that, we want it to be more visible. So that was a real key thing that came out.

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

Zack Haddock: The unfortunate thing is that the common themes that were coming through the campfire conversations are themes that we were very familiar with. They were themes that were present when I was a student. They were themes that were present when my eldest son was going through school and I think they're going to be themes going into the future until we start listening and take advantage of people's communication and the community's input into this.

There were themes around racism, there were themes around a lack of visibility of us in the curriculum and when we are visible and in the curriculum, it's often in the humanities and in the arts space and our contribution to sciences and STEM and other areas we’re often either invisible or completely overlooked.

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

Chris Bush: Some of the stories that we heard most strongly in our campfire conversation was the environment and the feeling that our school created on entry for Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander students. That our school, despite our best efforts, perhaps wasn't the welcoming place we wanted it to be based on the sort of memorabilia and historical markers that we had in the foyer.

So by listening to the voices of our Indigenous members of our school community, we've changed our foyer. We now have Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags. Students in our Indigenous student group, which we started after the campfire conversation, are designing a mural to greet students upon entry into school that celebrates the history of our school’s setting.

Some other really powerful messages that were coming through loud and clear is that our history curriculum at school doesn't touch on Indigenous histories nearly enough. And whilst we do have some presence of Indigenous histories, our students and families were telling us that it was more important for us to have far greater representation of their histories in our curriculum. So because of the campfire conversation, we're reviewing and adapting and improving our curriculum from year seven all the way through to twelve to ensure that all students are educated appropriately about the true history of our schools place.

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

Stephanie Raike: Something else that was heard at the campfire was because of when we held it. It was quite early, it was in the first term of a year seven’s journey at Elisabeth Murdoch College and his parents, he had both parents come along, shared that they had moved from Queensland to Victoria and in Queensland the school had actively told them to hide their Aboriginality and it's not something that they experienced down in Victoria and it was something that they felt quite different, they felt celebrated and that was a story that, you know, again is a bit hard to hear because you want to hear about anyone having to hide their cultural identity but to hear that it's actually on the other side as opposed to being wanting to celebrate and having to hide it, they've moved to a state that celebrates them and an education department and a school that celebrates them. And they're now stepping into spaces that, you know, will hopefully increase that celebration and identity for lots of other students and families as well. I'm not sure if we would have heard that without the campfire. I'm not sure what forum we would have had to hear that story and it was an important story to hear and an important story to share and provide feedback as part of the campfire and the reforms.

[On-screen text: Mathew Lillyst, Gunditjmara, Manager, Self-determination in Education Reform, DE]

Mathew Lillyst: There were lots of things that we heard through the campfire conversations, and the conceptual framework that we've developed really provides a high level summary and a synthesis of what we heard. But we heard very strongly around what schools aren’t protecting and things that schools are overlooking or not supporting for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people. So things such as their connection to family, their connection to their culture ,their connection to their identity and their sense of belonging, those are things that we heard time and time again weren't being respected or valued, and they're often treated as negative, negative things. Whereas, you know, when we heard that schools valued those things and celebrated those parts of a student's identity, then that's when students flourished. That's when they felt themselves and that's when they felt safe.

Many of our students are experiencing the same barriers and experiencing the same difficulties in their school experience and there's a sense of isolation, but particularly for students who are one of only a handful of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in the school, there's that sense of, oh this is only happening to me. But what we heard very clearly is that our students across the state are going through very similar challenges. And so for students, this means that we need to find out how we can support each school, to then support each student in their own sense of self-determination and there own aspirations for their education.

For families, what we heard and what this means for them is that our students are still experiencing some of the hardships and challenges that our parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great great grandparents had experienced, and where there's been some great progress made across the system, there are some of our families who still feel that their children and their babies are still going through these same challenges. So this means we need to not only empower our students, but to also empower their families and their wider communities to also feel like they can have the role that they want in supporting the self-determination for our young people.

We’ve learnt many things through this process, we’ve learnt that there's a lot of goodwill out in schools. We've learnt that schools really want to try and do the right thing. That there's a sense that they have to do it alone and so through this process, we've learnt that by bringing people together to have these conversations, that they then start their own goals. They've established their own connections and relationship for working together and so we've learned that by creating this space for these conversations, it's not only helped share our stories and share the voices of our young people, but it's also shown us that those conversations really melt away the anxiety and they really help people feel energised and strengthened and encouraged that we can really bring about some meaningful and impactful change.

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

[End transcript]