When the NT with its brand new self styled government assumed responsibility for education in 1979, we were offered a special challenge by our visionary education secretary. His name was Jim Eedle (Dr Jim) and he challenged us with a new reality.

“Schools are for children” he told we principals at a Katherine Conference in March 1979.

“Educational structure should always serve function, that being the education of children”, he said.

Metaphorically, he likened the “coming” of the Northern Territory Educational System as being likened to a rising sun.

How sad it is that in so many ways structure is now paramount and often so grandiose an skyscraper like that function is left well behind. In fact, one sometimes wonders what the function of education happens to be these days.

In metaphoric terms how sad it is that in so many ways the rising sun of the developing system has gone behind the clouds and at best is penumbric.

Northern Territory Education is nothing like the system it was when first moated all those years ago. While some changes may have been good, many have discounted the important elements of white meaningful education and proper student development should be all about.