Aboriginal education campaigners call for Federal Government to keep Gonski funding.

By Louise Yaxley for ABC News.

A group of Aboriginal parents, students and educators fear “life changing” benefits from extra school funding will be stripped if the Government does not fund the last two years of the Gonski model.

They are expected to tell him the Gonski funding allowed schools to hire Aboriginal education assistants, provide homework support, specialist literacy and maths support and mentoring programs.

They say the funding boost is helping close the gap with mainstream students, having improved indigenous school attendance and results.

The campaigners fear the benefits will be lost if the Government fails to match Labor’s commitment to fund the final two years of the Gonski model.

Senator Birmingham said the Government knew funding was important, but that what you did with it mattered even more.

“The Government’s discussions on future funding will not just be about how more money is spent but will seek to ensure we lift school outcomes too,” he said.

“The Turnbull Government remains committed to engaging prior to 2018 in discussions with the states, territories and non-government sector about post-2017 funding that is fair, transparent, needs-based, affordable and looks beyond just a two-year horizon,” he said

Culturally appropriate support makes dramatic difference

She says the funding has made a big difference to her.

“Even out of the school hours I get tutoring two days a week and that really helps me,” she told AM.

“That really helps me to excel in all my subjects.”

Gai Brown, a parent and education officer at Vincentia High said that in the past the curriculum and support “wasn’t culturally appropriate”.

“There was no support to look into what things might interest them to engage them,” she said.

“It happened to a whole generation of our children from the community. You leave school at 15, you don’t know what you want to do. They had no options, they felt like they had no choice.”

Ms Brown said two of her sons went to the school before there was extra help and both were expelled at 15.

She said one is now 28 and addicted to ice and other drugs and has never worked. The other spent nine months in jail following an ice addition and died at 23.

“When you give a kid choices of what they want to do with their life, the world is their oyster,” she said.

Ms Brown said if their choices were limited they would look for other options “and unfortunately for us for a long time it was drugs and criminal activity”.

But she said Gonski funding has meant her younger children and nieces have had extra support, including a tutor three days a week.

“The kids just started to really engage with that tutor and we also ensured that it was a community person that they knew, which made a huge difference,” she said.

“We established the Dhurga language program which is the local language down there so the bilingual education engaged the kids even more.”

Ms Brown said her son was in late high school when the support started. He set new goals and is now a training officer in the Royal Australian Navy.

“And I should point out that none of my children are angels — they’re academically average — average children that work hard to achieve their goals,” she said.

“One of them is now a childcare worker and the other two are in uni; one doing law and one doing nursing.”

Gonski model works, education worker says

Leon Brown, a parent and Aboriginal and cultural and community education worker at the Vincentia school, said his message to Mr Birmingham was that the extra support has been life-changing and needs to be continued.

“The funding models that we have had historically are too short term,” Mr Brown said.

“The vision of those budget processes are not long enough for us to achieve tangible outcomes.

“What I have learned about Gonski is if we have a idea and a model that is in place for the long-term, for both the schools and our communities, that is the best resolution that I have heard so far.

“It is the only resolution for a way forward.”

This post originally appeared on ABC News.