Kyleigh Nash

I'm Kyleigh Nash, principal at Yarrawarrah Public School, which is in the Sutherland Shire on the lands of the Dharawal speaking people.

Jenny Walker

I'm Jenny Walker, and I'm principal of Kellyville Public School and we're on Darug land.

Tessa Keenan

I'm Tessa Keenan, I'm a non-Indigenous person. Grew up in Wonnarua Country, living and working on Yuin Country. I'm general manager of the Narragunnawali program at Reconciliation Australia.

Ashli Ware

I'm Ashli Ware, and my school is by Baryulgil Public School on Bundjalung Country, and I'm also a non-Aboriginal person and am really passionate about working in Aboriginal education.

Tessa Keenan

So Narragunnawali was launched back in 2015, and it's one of quite of a few programs at Reconciliation Australia. And when the Australian curriculum came about and the professional standards for teachers at that national level, our board kind of said, we need to be working in the space of reconciliation and education, particularly now, it's a real professional expectation. So the Narragunnawali program now has over 10,000 schools and early learning services registered to develop a Reconciliation Action Plan, which is pretty exciting. So we've got about 50% of all early learning services and about 40% of schools. So we'd love to see more come through. And I guess what we're focusing on as a program now is really the professional learning side of things and really ensuring that schools and early learning services are making that ongoing commitment to reconciliation. And I should say that Narragunnawali is a word from the Ngunnawal language, and it means alive, wellbeing, coming together in peace. And that alive part is really important when they're talking about RAPs. And I'm sure you all agree that it's not just about National Reconciliation Week, which is a great time to shine a bit of a spotlight on reconciliation and particularly Reconciliation Action Plans, but yeah, it's a 365 day.

Jenny Walker

Absolutely.

Ashli Ware

All the time.

Jenny Walker

Yeah, reconciliation is every day.

Tessa Keenan

Every day.

Ashli Ware

Yeah.

Kyleigh Nash

Yep.

Jenny Walker

It also brings your community together, with the Reconciliation Action Plan. And it's really important that your early learning plus your primary, but even your high schools, your high schools, because it's a continuing journey for all our children.

Tessa Keenan

Yeah, and particularly in the early years space, you know, reconciliation, it's a big word, to even just get your mouth around in terms of what it means, and you know, when we're talking about looking at historical acceptance, which is one of the five dimensions of reconciliation that you know, yeah, they're incredibly confronting parts of our histories, and it's about how do we kind of do that in an age appropriate way and we've just been so inspired by so many of the early learning services, yet if early years can do it, we can do it right through. And if you think about it, reconciliation as a movement is only one generation old. Yeah, that started in 1991 as kind of a formal process of reconciliation, and, yeah, it's only one generation. And it's amazing to see the shifts that can happen in such short amount of time when you have that leadership and commitment.

Jenny Walker

The most important thing is when people say, I didn't realise. I lived in this area and I didn't realise this was happening in my backyard. And that's when the truth-telling comes into it. And it also makes them, I want to learn more. It is confronting, but I wanna learn more. And that's all about the reconciliation and the process you go through with that. Nobody knows everything, but you're open to learn many things.

Kyleigh Nash

And that's the importance of cultural training for our staff too is that, I think initially when I started my journey at Yarrawarrah, it was, oh my gosh, I don't know enough to be able to teach the children, or I'm scared I'm going to do it wrong and there's that fear aspect. But I think the more cultural training we do, the more people feel safe to, it's okay if you don't know, let's find out together, let's be on that journey together. It just opens up the doors to be able to feel safe to, you know, share truth-telling with our kids.

Ashli Ware

We started our RAP journey after our school was impacted by bushfires, Covid, and the floods. And what we were finding is that some of our families were losing engagement with our school and having an enrollment of 100% Aboriginal students, it was so important for us to find something to support our families to come back to our school. And basically, we had some conversations with our staff around it and explored it, explored the platform, and we went from there. It just grew and grew after that. Currently, an exciting part of where I've come from is to support other schools in our network to go on the Reconciliation Action Plan journey as well and it's quite, I think in the beginning, an abstract concept. And at the beginning, I would've loved to have had somebody to sit with to say, this is how you can make a start, just start small, one thing, it's okay. And from there, I hope that that can also grow and grow.

Kyleigh Nash

I'm working with two networks too. The Fairfield Network and the Wonnarua River Network, and I think that that is absolutely right. People are already doing so many amazing things in terms of Aboriginal education in their schools, that it's really just formalising what they're already doing. So it takes that huge, like, oh my gosh, we're developing a RAP that's really huge, to hey, we're already sort of doing these things, let's formalise it.

Ashli Ware

Yeah, let's pick out the ones that we are already doing, but how can we get better at some of these other things or how can we start to implement these things and prioritise those for the needs of the schools?

Tessa Keenan

So there's 40 actions that schools can choose from, and I guess each year in that refresh process, it's about taking those minimum ones deeper, but also looking at what other ones can you take on? And it is about kind of, sometimes we have schools that, you know, they might select all 40 and go, yep off we go, and then realise, actually we're gonna go back to maybe 15 the next year, because that was a bit ambitious.

Ashli Ware

Yeah, so ambitious.

Tessa Keenan

Exactly. But it is about kind of trying to break it down to really, you know, clear steps and being able to assign deliverables to different members of your working group. And with dates, you know, it's a planning tool, really, in terms of the online platform and it is really important that everybody has a really clear idea of what they're doing. And I guess the reason that Narragunnawali is an online platform is largely because we know how busy you guys are within schools, and it is really important that the curriculum resources and professional learning resources and everything is there to support the why behind each of the actions, but also linking them to the professional requirements as well.

Jenny Walker

And with the RAP, one thing about, as a principal, it is not outside what you do in your school. You know, if anything, it goes in your strategic improvement plan.

Ashli Ware

Absolutely.

Jenny Walker

And it's part of your community, it's part of your learning. So weave it into your SIP and make it part of your deliverables. And with the RAP, with the structure you've got with the RAP, it is easy to find those deliverables. At Kellyville, our journey has been a long journey, and it wasn't until my staff said to me, we want a RAP. It's not coming from the top, it is coming from the ground, it's coming from the roots saying this is what we want, but it's absolutely weaved into our schooling strategic improvement plan, which is important. And the community, sorry, the community signs off on that, an AECG signs off it, so therefore it is embedded in what you're doing with that.

Tessa Keenan

Yeah, as long as you're doing the thinking and the learning and the hard work.

Ashli Ware

And I think the way to make it not tokenistic is to have it woven into your school plan and to see what other people are doing within their school plan. If you can show somebody your initiatives, your IPMs, that you've already done to help somebody else to do it, then I think that we're going to find more and more schools having a go.

Kyleigh Nash

I think that if we, as the leaders of our school, have a passion for it as well, I think,

Ashli Ware

So helps.

Kyleigh Nash

It's contagious, right?

Ashli Ware

Yeah.

Tessa Keenan

Yeah. We've seen that as well, that you know, principals and school leaders or directors of services are the biggest enablers, but also can be the biggest barriers, unfortunately. But, you know, there's still, yeah. So there's a really important role that leaders, educational leaders play. And it's a unique role. It needs to be modelled, you know, it can't just be one really passionate teacher doing a fantastic lesson.

Jenny Walker

And build the capacity in your staff. That's important because staff move, principals move. But if you've got that capacity, that is the culture of your school, doesn't matter who comes in and out. It will still continue.

Ashli Ware

It's there anyway.

Jenny Walker

Yes.

Kyleigh Nash

Aboriginal education's always been a really huge passion of mine coming up from the South Coast where it's very much embedded, coming into my school and going, okay, well, you know, this is still really important to me and I'd love for it to be important for you as well. Let's go on the journey together. And then through that process, we had more families feel safe, culturally safe to identify. So, you know, it went up to 7% at one point. And, you know, it's dropped a little bit now as children graduate and go into high school. But it fluctuates, we know that. We do a reconciliation term, we don't do a week. We embed it as a term thing. So our activities are across the term so yeah, it's nice.

Jenny Walker

Taking on your point of view, from my school, we have about 67%, 70% non English speaking background. And it's so important because a lot of these families have come to Australia and they don't know the history of Australia, and it's important that they learn the truth. And they're great ambassadors.

Kyleigh Nash

Yeah.

Jenny Walker

Absolutely. As I said, it's all year long. And one of the activities- and it's not activity, it's embedded in what we do- every class writes their own Acknowledgement. And in the classroom, you've got, welcome to such and such class, and this is our Acknowledgement. So it's there all the time. At assembly, the children get up and read and say their Acknowledgement at assembly. So there's this ownership and the growth of writing Acknowledgement, even from the teacher's point of view, it's not stock standard, it's not a,

Kyleigh Nash

Script.

Jenny Walker

script, absolutely not a script. It is coming from the heart because of the knowledge that these children have received over the last couple of years. It is really coming from the heart. So they talk about that and they own that. And it's really important that people see that. And that's why it's done at our assemblies when we have visitors, we have a school Acknowledgement, and that's said all the time and shown to our visitors.

Tessa Keenan

And I love the incredibly visible Acknowledgement that you put on the very busy road.

Jenny Walker

Yes.

Tessa Keenan

At your school, so you can't miss it.

Jenny Walker

Yeah.

Ashli Ware

Ours was a lot to do with welcoming our communities and our surrounding communities as well. Not just Baryulgil and Malabugilmah, which are the two communities which feed to my school. But it was about getting our neighbouring countries, like the Yagul Country and Gumbaynggirr Country to come to Baryulgil and see what we do at Baryulgil. So we had a big togetherness day and that was named by our staff and students, and we were able to invite students from our neighbouring small school and the wider community came, I think that there was probably about 200 people there. And my director came up for the day and he thought that he was gonna have my director meeting after it. And he said, I didn't realise you were gonna have so many people there, we won't have the meeting.

Kyleigh Nash

That's great.

Ashli Ware

It was just a really beautiful day to have non-Aboriginal people and Aboriginal people come together surrounding the children, the children were engaged in activities throughout the day. We had Elders yarning over at our yarning circle, it was really special. That was the highlight so far.

Kyleigh Nash

And it builds that sense of community because you involve your community and so you get to build those relationships with Elders and with your Aboriginal community and they then bring amazing creative ideas to the table as well. And so your children just are benefiting so much from the connections that you're making.

Ashli Ware

Yeah.

Tessa Keenan

Yeah and not all schools, or staff or school leaders within schools, have those relationships. They can take a really long time. I guess if we think about schools as institutions and the history of education, particularly in New South Wales, that it hasn't always been inclusive of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures, people. You know, the exclusion on demand policy was active till 1972. And so, you know, there's a lot of trust that needs to be rebuilt.

Kyleigh Nash

Well our RAP, we started in 2020. I mean, there was Covid lockdowns and all sorts of things in between there, right? But we didn't actually publish till 2023. And that for us was about building those connections and getting it right and making sure that it wasn't tokenistic and that it was going to be a document that really was driven within the school. So, you know, it's definitely not overnight. Yes, definitely not.

Jenny Walker

Yeah.

Tessa Keenan

I think the thing to remember though, it is a plan and it is forward looking. And if you don't have those relationships, you know, you can get started. There's so much that you can learn. And I think a lot of the platform has very introductory information because it's not assuming too much in terms of this, it's assuming there's a level of interest.

Kyleigh Nash

Yeah, yeah.

Tessa Keenan

But in terms of, I guess knowing that many teachers, particularly who went, you know, through the education system in Australia are having to unlearn a whole lot of stuff. I think the story you told before about, you know, when you started as 1% Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and that grew to seven at one point.

Kyleigh Nash

Yeah.

Tessa Keenan

You know, this is a really hard thing to measure, but I think when you see families enrolling their children, they're entrusting your school. Like I think that is an incredible measure of success and you, I guess, yeah.

Kyleigh Nash

Even the survey, you know, once you go through the refresh process and your staff redo the survey.

Tessa Keenan

Yeah.

Kyleigh Nash

The growth you get in that data is amazing because of the things that you've done across the 365 days, people are feeling more comfortable and that the growth and the impact there, that's huge.

Jenny Walker

And I think, I've just noticed something in my school that the lens that staff are putting over resources now. Instead of just saying yes, that is. That is really important because it's not saying this is, we can't have that, but they put the lens over in saying, no, this isn't true. No, we don't want that book, we don't want that in there. Which is outstanding and it's not coming from the principal, it's coming from the staff because they have learned, they have been on the journey, and they feel uncomfortable if they've got that in their classroom now. And that to me, that's a growth.

Kyleigh Nash

Yeah, I had a great chat with your teacher librarian who, you know, she was talking about how helpful the evaluating resources guide has been and she did a huge audit of the whole library.

Jenny Walker

Yes.

Tessa Keenan

And started using the guide, which is just a series of questions really. But now that's just the lens that she sees it through. She doesn't have to sit down with the questions to work through it. What about when it comes to like recruitment and bringing on new staff? So thinking about how you measure, you know, how you go, I guess so much of it comes down to your team. So is that something that you think about? Yeah.

Jenny Walker

Well, in my induction,

Tessa Keenan

Yeah.

Jenny Walker

There's a whole unit on Aboriginal education and what we do at Kellyville, so that a new new staff member, whether experienced staff member or new staff member, would have that. And that's part of the first 10 weeks. There's a whole unit on that that has been taught by one of our executives.

Ashli Ware

And going back to

Tessa Keenan

Yes.

Ashli Ware

the evidence and how have I measured that? For me, I go back to my story about engaging after all of the natural disasters and things. And just between the end of last year and the year before, my attendance had risen 12%

Tessa Keenan

Yeah.

Ashli Ware

in 12 months. And I put a lot of that down to the initiatives that are taking place within the school, but also the further connections that I've now got with the non-Aboriginal community and the Aboriginal community as well. That's been so important for us and really, really important for student growth. Yeah.

Tessa Keenan

Yeah, that's fantastic.

Jenny Walker

And also your measurement, you were saying that you're working with networks, you're working with a group of schools, it's across your network as a principal that you've gotta RAP and that you are doing that journey that you're recognised with that.

Ashli Ware

Don't expect that it can be one person or yourself doing it. The collaboration is the key.

Kyleigh Nash

Yeah, the team, the working team. And my director's given us half days together. It gives us the time and space to work together. So that's something that's been really powerful and had a huge impact on our network is coming together, talking about the RAP that Yarrawarrah has, but also then reflecting on the RAP that they would like to have and how their team can go about it.

Tessa Keenan

So, how as principals, how do you support that and resource the work of reconciliation?

Jenny Walker

I think for us it was a priority. As I said, it was in our strategic improvement plan, so that that came about. We had a budget towards it, but it was really time budget, more than money budget. But it's priority. Doesn't get put on the back burner. This is where we are, we do the plan for it. It's just like anything else in your school, if you make it a priority, it will happen. The other thing is from the benefit of spreading it out, not just one person doing it, you build the capacity in that team so it doesn't fall over. And that way your priority's there, but also your timeframe is spread across instead of having a person off doing it, they don't have ownership of it, the team has ownership of it.

Kyleigh Nash

Yeah and that's something that we found with the Narragunnawali platform was that although you assign it to a person, we have a working document that's aside from that where it's assigned to a position because we have had quite a bit of change, you know, staff are being upskilled and moving into higher positions. So you don't want particular deliverables falling down and being left by the person who's left the school. So by assigning, you know, this to the stage three assistant principal, then it's the stage three assistant principal, whoever they are, then that's part of their role, you know. So that's something that we found, you know, that's very useful.

Tessa Keenan

Particularly where those networks of principals or schools exist on the same country. You know, that you can also share those networks of relationships and that, you know, particularly for, there's 26,000 schools and early learning services in the country, and that's 26,000 schools and early learning services that we'd love to see developing relationships with the local Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander communities. And that's a lot of demand on people's time. So I think also trying to think of ways to, I guess, yeah, pull resources and opportunities where, you know, it could be working with Elders or Traditional Owners or community members in a one to many relationship as well, so that it's, yeah. You know, and 'cause the stories of that place are the same regardless of the schools.

Ashli Ware

We need to come together and support one another in this change. So important. It's interesting that our school hasn't had a reconciliation action yet as teach about reconciliation and to create something specific for a celebration for reconciliation. And that's what we're doing this year because it's written in our SIP so that's part of our plan for this year. And just last week, because I am a teaching principal, I started to brainstorm with the children, what does reconciliation mean to you? And it was really interesting that they had heard about it, but they weren't able to answer deep into what that was. So I know that just from that teaching experience, that teaching them about it is going to be so important this year. We're going to do an artwork and that's in collaboration with one of the high schools in our area, which is around the theme of 'Now More Than Ever'. And with those artworks the children are, this week they'll be designing an invitation to their parents to come into our school for morning tea during reconciliation week.

Tessa Keenan

Oh, that's beautiful.

Ashli Ware

Yeah!

Kyleigh Nash

Student voice is so powerful. You know, I think that that's something that really came out through our RAP process was that we did involve our students and hearing what they want in their school and how they wanna see reconciliation progress is so, so interesting.

Jenny Walker

For Kellyville now more than ever, it's important that the whole school moves forward. And when you have new people coming in kindergarten, we don't leave them behind. And the travel through into the high school and our connection with Kellyville High is outstanding because we've got that journey together. So now more than ever, we need to be standing up. And to teach, but also to action. It's got to be a whole generation and two generations that we are moving forward because if it's not now, it's not gonna be.

Ashli Ware

Yeah, yeah. I think for Reconciliation Australia, setting the theme this year was probably, it was pretty challenging. And in terms of what happened last year,

Kyleigh Nash

Absolutely.

Tessa Keenan

With the referendum. You know, I think we learnt a lot about where people are at in terms of their knowledge of the true histories of this country, but also the current realities of many Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people. So for me 'Now More Than Ever', it is about education and how critical it is for this next generation coming through and it's so important to be looking back and really, particularly in the space of education and the people who have really dedicated their lives to changing the system. And you know, we wouldn't have the Australian curriculum, cross curriculum priority that focuses on Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders histories and cultures if people didn't fight for that to be in there. So I think that this is where education, we were talking about generations before, that this is where it's at. And we're kind of educating multiple generations at any one time. It's not just about the students and the children coming through. It's about the teachers and the parents and the grandparents and community members that are all kind of learning alongside the journey of the schools. So yeah, that gives me hope to also see how well it is being and how possible it is, you know.

Jenny Walker

And I would say as principal, we'll be saying to principals who are thinking about a RAP, now more than ever you should be doing the RAP and getting that process done in your school so that you've got a blueprint of where to go forward.

Ashli Ware

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And starting right from early stage one, right through to stage three,

Kyleigh Nash

That's it.

Ashli Ware

And then working with your high schools.

Kyleigh Nash

Yeah.

Ashli Ware

That are in your local area to see how to navigate that run through so that it doesn't just stop there.

Jenny Walker

And now more than ever, take that first step.

Ashli Ware

Take the first step.

Kyleigh Nash

Yeah, absolutely.