TOO MANY people with ‘disconnect’ from prima facie educational delivery engage, sincerely but from a remote viewpoint, in ‘earnestly’ shaping educational futures. All many do, with respect, is to muddy the waters. Students and teachers at the chalkface become the victims of their enthusiasms and the guinea pigs sacrificed to their pet theories. That is precisely what is happening with Aboriginal education. Interestingly, people like myself who spent years in this educational domain are never asked to offer responses levied at systems by theorists. It is a shame that practitioners are so often discounted with the words of academics in ivory towers and far removed from prime places of teaching and learning, being the only propositions that count.

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Many of the ‘new’ ideas tried by government and departments in the NT have been tried and disgarded in past times. As we are so abysmal at keeping historical records, new leaders don’t have a clue about past times. So often our recall of the past stops at yesterday. We need to get smarter about recording and revisiting and learning from our past.

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NAPLAN being out of the educational picture this year, was the one positive in what has been a difficult educational year. May this testing regime, a distraction and bane of Australian education since 2008, stay gone.