ONE ARM POINT REMOTE COMMUNITY SCHOOL, WA
SCHOOL:
One Arm Point Remote Community School is a K-11 school located 200km north of Broome on the Dampier Peninsular. Of the school's approximately 100 students, 95 per cent are Indigenous.
PROGRAM:
The Bardi Cultural Program (BCP). The BCP has been introduced in response to a need identified by local Elders and other Bardi people. It is a means to involving Elders, capturing local community knowledge and history and weaving it into the school curriculum. Through a process of community consultation the school developed a cultural studies program. An old classroom has been made into a cultural museum and serves as a narration of the cultural learning journeys that have been captured through the cultural studies program. It is now also used for the teaching of the local indigenous language of Bardi.
Each week there are planned cultural activities including:
- Fish trapping
- Fish poisoning
- Stories
- Art
- Dance
- Bush foods
- Bush medicines
- Spear making
- Boomerang making
Each term concludes with a cultural concert in which students showcase skills they have learned during the term. Two cultural camps have been held, at Sunday Island and Gooda.
Books and DVDs have been produced in Bardi, Aboriginal English and Standard Australian English. These have been shared with other schools in the West Kimberly, enabling other principals to model contextualised cultural programs and Reconciliation programs on what is happening at One Arm Point.
OUTCOMES:
Numeracy, Reading and Writing - % of Indigenous students BELOW the benchmark
| Numeracy | Reading | Writing
| Numeracy | Reading | Writing
| | | 2007 | 2007 | 2007
| 2008 | 2008
| 2008
| Year 3
| 91 | 53 | 90
| 0
| 33
| 33 | Year 7
| 17 | 33
| 33 | 0 | 25
| 50
|
PALS
The school won a 2008 Partnership, Acceptance, Learning, Sharing Award for its commitment to community partnerships.
Indigenous Education Workers
It has been observed that the program has promoted capacity building among the IEWs. It has fostured skills of communication, planning, decision making, problem solving, time management, organising, community consultation and promotion through ICT.
MORE INFORMATION:
Stephen Price, principal 08 9192 4932 or steve.price@det.wa.edu.au
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