Rawa School is an Aboriginal community school at Punmu in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia. The community has a population of around 150 people whose first language is Manyjiljarra. The children have limited access to English as there is no television or radio and the community is over 800 kilometres from the nearest service town of Port Hedland.

Indulkana Anangu school, on the Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara Lands S.A. has about 70 students. The classes are CPC (pre-school), Reception, Junior Primary, Middle Primary, Upper Primary and Secondary girls and boys. At a staff meeting early this year, I proposed a focus on reading, across the school, for one term, with a review at the end. This idea was accepted by the staff.

In this paper I offer an explanation for teacher-held beliefs that contribute to perceptions of school failure by indigenous children and discuss the ends served by these perceptions. Although the validity of using retention rates as an indicator of actual educational outcomes is questioned (Luke, A. et al, 1993:144), there are few other indicators presently available. The figures on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student participation rates-indicate that few children of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent complete secondary school. The following figures, based on data collected in the 1991 Australian Census, show the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander school children of a particular sex and age expressed as a proportion of the population of children of the same sex and age, in Queensland.

In our society success in science is important for students as a means to full participation, empowerment, and access to career/further study options. Science in schools is an area of concern for Aboriginal education because of the low number of Aboriginal students who experience this success. Goal 3 of the Common And Agreed National Goals For Schooling In Australia (May, 1989) speaks of “equality of educational opportunities” and providing for “groups with special learning requirements”. For Aboriginal students, academic success and cultural identity are twin priorities: achievement and success need to go hand in hand with a strengthening and deepening of cultural identity. Students' Aboriginality must not be denied by learning programs which define science purely in terms of the dominant Western culture.

This paper outlines the history of education in Maningrida homeland centres. It is an extract from a larger report titled The Maningrida Homeland Centre Education Program (Pugh, 1993).