| Summary: | Abstract
The history of remote school education in the Northern
Territory can best be summarised as years of lost
opportunities, pedagogies of discrimination, and diminished
lives for those parents and children who trusted and
responded to the government’s invitation to come to school.
From late 2001 to 2005 historic educational change occurred
in the remote Community Education Centre of Kalkaringi and
Daguragu in the Northern Territory, the site for the
delivery of the Northern Territory’s first Year 12
Indigenous graduates studying in their own community
school. At the heart of the historic achievement was a
radical change in thinking about education for Indigenous
students. This paper discusses some of the policy
parameters and educational circumstances that prevented
significant change in the delivery model of education for
the Community Education Centres in addition to a
conceptualisation of how that school circumvented the
policy parameters and instituted real change from the
ground up. The paper examines, through a critical lens, the
nature of the culture change that was crafted and built
upon within Kalkaringi School and its communities, despite
an initial and significant sense of powerlessness felt by
families and to some extent the teachers and principal
within the school. Through the development and embrace of a
metaphor of possibility and hope - the challenge of
climbing the educational mountain formed the foundation for
a dedicated and committed enactment of an equitable
educational entitlement for remote Indigenous students.
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