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Professor Gary Foley. Photo: Graham Mark, NewsCorp.
Archive opens eyes
New project to challenge
portrayal of Aboriginal
Australia’s political past.
T
he political history of Aboriginal
Australians is being reappraised
and rewritten through Victoria
University’s Aboriginal History Archive.
Containing thousands of digitised and
rare photos, videos, campaign ephemera,
press clippings and manuscripts, the
collection covers the self-determination
movement that swept through Australia
in the early 1970s.
Importantly, by showing more optimistic
aspects of Aboriginal political history,
the collection challenges the dominant
representations of Aboriginal people as
powerless and exploited.
“The AHA offers the material upon
which the dominant version of post-
invasion Australian history can be
challenged, reappraised and rewritten.
It contains the documentation not
only of exploitation, repression and
suffering, but also, more importantly, of
Demand-driven dropouts
Report questions demand-driven university model.
T
he demand-driven university system is having mixed results
on student performance and outcomes, a new Productivity
Commission report has found.
While the report found the new system has increased student
numbers – particularly students from low socioeconomic
backgrounds – it highlighted higher dropout rates and concerns
over student performance.
The Productivity Commission used longitudinal studies and
government data to track a cohort of students, aged 17–22, who
could not have accessed university study before the introduction of
the demand-driven system in 2009.
The report found these “additional” students had a dropout
rate of 22 per cent compared with the 12 per cent rate of other
students. It also found this cohort entered university with lower
literacy and numeracy levels, on average, and 73 per cent of the
group had an ATAR below 70 or no ATAR at all.
4
Aboriginal struggle, confidence, pride
and innovation,” said one of the archive’s
chief investigators, Dr Edwina Howell.
Howell also said that the AHA will
enable “greater accuracy, understanding
and validity in research and analysis in
Australia’s Indigenous social, political and
cultural activity than previously possible”.
The archive forms the centre of VU’s
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
research and is located within the
Moondani Balluk Indigenous Academic
Unit. Its name means to ‘embrace people’
in the Woiwurrung language of the
Wurundjeri people.
A lot of the content was gathered
over the last 50 years by Professor Gary
Foley, a VU academic and historian. He
was a seminal figure during the self-
determination movement and helped
establish the Aboriginal Embassy in
Canberra. Other parts of the Archive have
been collected by community groups
and individuals.
Plans have been mooted to turn the
AHA into a targeted classroom where
misrepresented chapters of Aboriginal
history could be retaught and rewritten. ■
The commission’s report gives weight to the argument that too
many students are ill-equipped to be entering university while
taking a swipe at the school sector.
“Together with the long-term decline in literacy and numeracy
of Australian school students, this means that far more students
are entering university ill-prepared than was the case prior to the
demand-driven system,” the report said.
“The school system has arguably not adapted to the role needed
of it to prepare more young people to succeed at university, or
more broadly to meet the growing demand in the Australian
economy for complex and adaptable skills. Average literacy and
numeracy of school children needs to rise to fill this role, reversing
the sharp falls since 2003.”
The report also questions the growing popularity of university
study and its applicability to all students.
“University will not be the best option for many. Viable
alternatives in employment and vocational education and training
will ensure more young people succeed.”
As reported by the ABC, Universities Australia chief executive
Catriona Jackson said the report needs qualification.
“It seems to me the measures the Productivity Commission
report has taken is they’re just looking at students under 22 years
of age,” Jackson said. “If you just look at one of those groups,
Indigenous students, a third of the Indigenous students who are
studying in universities are over 30. And those numbers have
doubled, by the way. So we’re not counting the right cohort.”
Jackson also said that, overall, there has been a marked increase
in students from low socioeconomic, rural and remote, and
ethnically and culturally diverse backgrounds. ■