Hamish Curry, Executive Director, Asia Education Foundation Follow @hamishcurry

The Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration was agreed to by all Australian Ministers of Education last December. Mparntwe (pronounced mm-BARN-doo-uh) is the Arrernte name for the place where Alice Springs came to be built.  

The goals of this new national education declaration are almost identical to the goals of the 2008 ‘Melbourne Declaration’ made a decade earlier despite the reality that the context of education has changed dramatically since 2008 - especially technological, cultural, and global changes. It’s reasonable to expect that a set of goals agreed to in 2019 should reflect new and ambitious intentions for the future of young Australians and their education to 2030.

You could equally argue that the 2008 goals were unrealised and remain relevant targets for Australia today. If not already on your radar, these two goals are that -

Goal 1: The Australian education system promotes excellence and equity
Goal 2: All young Australians become:

• confident and creative individuals
• successful lifelong learners
• active and informed members of the community.

The most perplexing aspect of the Mparntwe Education Declaration is the preamble which sets the context for the education goals that follow. 

It is excellent that the preamble strongly emphasises the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in learning from, with, and supporting them in education. What is odd about this preamble is that nowhere does it mention the need for greater intercultural or global engagement. None. And yet the vision put forward is for “a world-class education”. 

The 2008 National Declaration made a major point in its preamble of the urgent need to equip our young people for a radically changing world. Yet, in 2020, when the world is changing at an even faster rate, we seem to be ignoring it.

AEF made a number of submissions in the consultation process for the new Declaration.

We cited the continuing rapid changes in the region of the world in which we live. We emphasised the growing diversity in our own society in Australia resulting from escalating globalisation. Through trade, employment, migration, tourism, agriculture and technology, we constantly connect to our neighbours in the Indo-Pacific.

Our young people need to understand that engagement and develop the capabilities to harness its opportunities and minimise any risks.

Australian student at the Australia-ASEAN Youth Forum: Regional Trade in conversation with the Cambodian Ambassador to Australia.

A draft of the Declaration, released earlier last year, included no mention at all of intercultural understanding or global outlook. AEF wrote to every State and Territory Minister of Education, as well as the Federal Minister of Education. Our letters were signed by leading Australians working in business and international relations. We emphasised the role of intercultural learning as a way to drive our future – underlining the need for collaboration, creativity, empathy and a global outlook for every young Australian.

It is difficult to measure the impact efforts like these had on the final Mparntwe Declaration released in December. There are now some clearer statements that support intercultural learning including to “…collaborate internationally to share best practice and help young Australians learn about and engage with the world.” Another reference supports students to “…understand their responsibilities as global citizens and know how to affect positive change.” These fit neatly with the school partnerships and youth programs AEF offers and will be areas we continue to grow.

The Mparntwe Declaration also states the need for our students to be “…informed and responsible global and local members of the community who value and celebrate cultural and linguistic differences, and engage in the global community, particularly with our neighbours in the Indo-Pacific region.” This aligns very well with the OECD goals for global competence and links language with intercultural understanding and capability.

It’s encouraging to see our region acknowledged in our national goals for education. If only this had been included more explicitly in the Declaration’s preamble rather than in the finer print of page 8.

Perhaps the final example from the Mparntwe Declaration is a pragmatic statement about the role of the curriculum in supporting “…students to become responsible local and global members of the community in an interconnected world and to engage with complex ethical issues and concepts such as sustainability …[and] practical skills development in areas such as ICT, critical and creative thinking, intercultural understanding and problem solving.”

These are exactly the combination of skills that underpin our work at AEF. We are buoyed and motivated by the statements about our global reality now woven through this declaration. 

We will be using the Mparntwe Declaration to continue to keep education, governments and key agencies accountable in helping to realise these goals.

We see it as just one more platform to link the world into world-class education in Australia.

Feature Image: Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration Front Cover -- Artwork credit Artist: Nerine Tilmouth, Ceremony, Karrinyarra, 2018, courtesy of Tangentyere Artists. © Nerine Tilmouth/Copyright Agency, 2019

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