Little improvement for Indigenous kids as a result of state government's Connected Communities program, which covers Hillvue State School

The assessment is contained within a review of the state government's Connected Communities program.

The 2012 strategy, implemented from 2013, is designed to improve attendance and educational outcomes for students in 15 schools in some of the most vulnerable communities in the state.

The strategy has failed to achieve most of its objectives, and there is no evidence it has helped students get into higher education, training or a post-school job, the review shows.

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Ironically, truancy rates of non-Indigenous students attending the majority-Aboriginal schools have improved, but Indigenous children's attendance has not, it said.

"In summary, there is moderate evidence to suggest that Connected Communities had a positive effect on Year 3 NAPLAN outcomes and little evidence to suggest that it had a positive effect on Year 5 or Year 9 NAPLAN outcomes," it said.

"There is strong evidence to suggest that student attendance increased following the introduction of Connected Communities, but only for primary school students."

Teachers Federation Country Organiser Mercurius Goldstein said the state government ought to simply double the number of teachers at the schools, a policy he said would be "budget neutral" or even "budget positive".

"The biggest irony is the department is not prepared to do the one thing that it has the most direct control and within its power and within its current budget to do and that is to effectively double the teaching workforce for these schools," he said.

"It's ironic that the government recognizes the importance of early childhood education and allied health strategy, as they should, but the one thing they have the greatest control over and can do right now is bringing in teachers in the numbers requires."

Bringing teachers down to a half teaching load would cost a mere $21.5 million, less than the $24 million in needs-based funding the schools receive from the federal government through the Gonski program, he said.

The logic of increasing staff is that they would each have more time to work with individual high-needs children.

A spokesperson for the Department of Education said the strategy is "showing promising results and has the potential to provide further positive outcomes for students and communities."

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"The Strategy appears to be more effective at the primary school education level and further time will be required to see if the results in later years improve, as this cohort of students continues through its schooling," he said.

"Work is underway to develop a new evaluation tool and methodology, as the Strategy expands up until 2023."

Some school staff told the inquiry they felt pressured to get children who were violent or simply not ready for school to attend anyway, to make the statistics look better.

"We're chasing kids that are so disengaged and so violent in the community, enticing them back because it makes us look good, when they're not ready," one school councillor told the review.

"If we get them back in the school for just a couple of hours a day, we get a massive high five, do you know what I mean?

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"What I'm seeing is more like babysitting. 'Send your kid to school for the day, that's it, they're at school... they can deal with them.' That's the perception we get off the parents," a primary school Aboriginal Education Officer said.

Under the strategy, schools receive a number of staffing bonuses, are led by a highly-paid Executive Principal, and receive aid designed to help them connect more deeply with the surrounding community. Targeted schools also teach Indigenous culture and language as part of the standard curriculum. The aim was to improve school attendance in Indigenous communities to the state average, among other objectives.

The state government's ultimate aim is to increase the number of Aboriginal students attaining the HSC while maintaining their cultural identity by 50 per cent.

Most of the schools are majority-Indigenous schools, including Hillvue Public School.

Moree East, Moree Secondary, Hillvue, and Boggabilla are all Connected Communities schools.

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