Rebecca Bennell’s son Tremaine has always struggled with attending school, sometimes only going one day a week.
“Last year, he probably went to school for 30 per cent of the time,” she said.
Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at age six, Tremaine would often keep to himself and disliked the idea of having to engage with other children at school.
That was until he joined Koya Club, an after school homework group targeted towards Indigenous primary students in Perth’s south.
It's now the 11-year-old's favourite part of the week and has encouraged him to go to school nearly every day.
“School is a warm-up before we get here,” he said.
“The activities are fun and stuff that you don't do in normal school and secondly, you can use your imagination.”
For parents like Ms Bennell, it has been a lifesaver.
“It’s really brought him out of his shell,” she said.
“He didn’t talk much before but now that he’s been able to mix with kids of his own culture and age, he talks to anyone.
“Koya Club has just been amazing and I’m so grateful for it.”
Helping children connect with culture
Run by Koya Aboriginal Corporation – an Indigenous community-controlled organisation – the club engages up to 50 children at the Medina Aboriginal Cultural Centre.
It not only assists children with their education but helps them build connections within the Indigenous community.
The club is one of several empowerment programs that form part of the organisation’s Koordoormitj Institute Primary School Academy (KIPSA).
KIPSA was designed to support greater educational outcomes for Aboriginal children and improve school attendance and engagement.
Lisa Garlett manages the KIPSA programs, which currently engage more than 250 children.
“It’s about strengthening identity and ensuring they have positive education experiences,” she said.
“I feel like everything that we do to make their spirits strong is only going to make them stronger in school.”
Koya also offers separate empowerment programs for girls and boys, as well as Kinship Champions, who act as mentors for Indigenous students at school.
Its transition program also helps Indigenous students in year six transition to secondary school successfully by setting up a buddy system to support them in the process.
WA attendance second lowest in nation
However, despite these community-led efforts, Indigenous school attendance rates remain a big problem around the country.
It comes as new data by the Productivity Commission shows WA’s Indigenous school attendance rate was the second lowest in the country last year, at just 66.4 per cent.
When looking at the data for year 10 in isolation, the retention rate dropped to 54 per cent – nearly 30 per cent lower than non-Indigenous students.
It was a similar story across Australia, however, with the states and territories all recording attendance rates for Aboriginal students well below the non-Indigenous cohort.
In WA, school attendance is worse in remote areas.
Lisa Garlett, who was also an Aboriginal and Islander education officer (AIEO) more than 20 years ago, said attendance has always been a “really tricky thing to tackle".
“There's always going to be barriers … especially with the age group that we work with, simply because it's out of the kids' control,” she said.
“It's generational for a lot of our mob, we've got a lot of parents and grandparents who are caring for grandchildren, who may not necessarily have had good experiences at school, if any.”
Poverty was also a factor, she said, with many families having a lot of children and struggling to afford school.
“There's also things like FASD (foetal alcohol spectrum disorders), underlying issues, kids not sleeping at night because there could be violence going on in the home … not having enough food,” she said.
However, she believes a shortage of Aboriginal and Islander education officers at schools and a lack of direct engagement with families has greatly contributed to the problem.
“Years ago, for an AIEO, if you had a kid that was missing for a while, that was a huge part of the role … and you go and find them,” she said.
"That's not happening anymore, no one's chasing the kids, there's no truancy officers.”
Children need to understand their 'worth'
While retention rates remain low in the City of Kwinana, where Koya Club is based, there has been a noticeable increase in attendance and participation at schools on the days when the club is on.
For Cheryl Kickett-Tucker, a director at Koya Aboriginal Corporation, that’s a win.
“It takes time for a child to understand their worth … and it's hard for some of these kids, because they've been put down all their lives, particularly in school systems,” she said.
“But [Koya] do the opposite; we build, we teach them to look at themselves with a lens that says you are wonderful, and you are great, and you can do it, with a bit of help.”
Expansion attempts futile
The non-for-profit organisation was established by Ms Kickett-Tucker’s father in 2006 after he noticed not enough was being done to help vulnerable children and youth in the community.
“My dad wanted a place where it didn't matter what colour you were, what gender, what sexuality, what income level you're at, if you needed a place to find a home, to find friends, to get respite as a parent, you can come to us,” she said.
She would like to see that expanded across the state and country, but so far, those efforts have been futile.
“We have to fight to be heard,” she said.
"But even with 18 years of existence, and, you know, a blue-ribbon governance system that we have here, we still have to consistently prove ourselves to the government before we can get any funding and I just don't understand that anymore."
She’s pleading for a greater effort from governments to close the education gap.
It comes as the Federal Government recently announced an additional $424 million as part of its Closing the Gap plan, following limited progress.
According to the 2022 Closing the Gap report, only four of the 18 targets were on track.
Meanwhile, in the latest WA Department of Education annual report, Director General Lisa Rodgers said Aboriginal student engagement and achievements were a “priority and one of our more significant challenges".
But Ms Kickett-Tucker wants to know “when does that green button get pushed".
“When do things start migrating from a piece of paper to action on the ground, so we can see the changes in the families and the kids that we serve?” she said.
“No one in a culture can exist without people.
“If those people are dying, [at an] alarming rate not being educated, dropping out of school, then where does the future hold for our people?”
