NT Schools in Crisis
This series of investigative pieces published in The Australian newspaper in 2023 won five NT Media Awards and was a finalist in the 2024 Walkley Awards for Indigenous Affairs reporting.
The Australian, September 22, 2023
Shocking state of NT education
If the students at Gamardi are lucky, a teacher will turn up two days a week. For whole months, nobody comes. And then there is the sorry excuse for a classroom.
The Australian, September 24, 2023
Students victims of ‘broken’ system
The Northern Territory government’s “broken” education funding model has left some schools with budgets more than $9m short of what they were supposed to receive.
The Australian, September 22, 2023
The nation’s forgotten schoolkids
The NT school system is failing students by leaving at least one in five effectively unfunded, offering an education so bad that most fail minimum literacy and numeracy standards.
The Australian, September 25, 2023
Security and prospects take toll
Attendance rates at remote Northern Territory schools are as low as 18.7 per cent and have been falling for a decade, with an overall attendance rate of 73.4 per cent.
The Australian, September 24, 2023
Kids fall off the money-go-round
While lush lawns and gardens welcome students inside Alyangula, less than 20km away, Angurugu’s imposing gates present a bleak, very different picture.
The Australian, September 25, 2023
Obstacles to school attendance
Underinvestment in education is sentencing the NT to a range of social and economic fallout. NT Schools in Crisis explores the heartbreaking reasons some kids don’t make it to school regularly.
The Australian, September 26, 2023
A ‘choiceless choice’
A decade-old policy that stopped providing high school education in remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory has had “disastrously bad” outcomes, research has shown, with some affected children joining criminal gangs.
The Australian, September 29, 2023
Students ‘denied human rights’
An alleged violation of the human right to education has prompted calls for a royal commission in the NT and raised the possibility of a class-action suit on behalf of students.
The Australian, October 20, 2023
Burney vows to close schools gap
NT families should have “more choice” in schooling, Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney says, highlighting the lack of secondary education in remote communities.
The Australian, August 2, 2024
Funds diverted to urban schools
The NT Government has pledged to ditch attendance-based school funding, as data analysis reveals the controversial model diverted money from remote Indigenous students to Darwin schools.
OPINION
The Australian, September 27, 2023
Bullied and blacklisted
NT teachers and Education Department staff say they have been blacklisted, bullied or threatened with losing their if they speak out, raising allegations of a severe lack of transparency within the government.
The Australian, September 30, 2023
Two worlds collide at school
Until recently, these children’s education was endangered. To save it, their community had to walk away from the NT government education system and create their own.
The Australian, October 22, 2023
Commissioner ties crime to education
The NT’s youth crime rate is linked to under-investment in education, says the National Children’s Commissioner, pointing to the huge cost of detaining children instead of fixing schools.
The Australian, August 23, 2024
Predator teacher backed by colleagues
A damning secret report has uncovered a ‘culture of acceptance’ and ‘cover-ups’ as it’s revealed a pedophile teacher convicted of offences against two young students was the subject of complaints for at least five years.
The Australian, September 27, 2023
Nothing magic about Carpetland
More than half of the Northern Territory’s $1.179bn education budget helps to support a “bloated bureaucracy”, which many say is at the expense of remote schools, some of which don’t have power, water or full-time registered teachers.
The Australian, October 17, 2023
Calls for education minister to resign
NT Education Minister Eva Lawler should quit over the crisis in schools because she was “too lazy and too incompetent” to fix the broken funding model, Independent MLA Robyn Lambley has demanded.
The Australian, July 31, 2024
NT takes cash despite dire outcomes
The NT Government has signed on to a federal agreement despite its own data showing declining results and diminishing aspirations, particularly for Indigenous students..