In this resource sheet, Dr Higgins examines child abuse and neglect in Indigenous communities from a societal perspective: applying a community development framework to understand effective strategies for reducing risks and enhancing children's safety and wellbeing. To be effective, strategies to address the problem of child abuse in Indigenous…

If schools are to be professionally responsive to and accountable to their clients, each school must have some control over decisions affecting its particular student body. These include decisions in the areas of policy, curriculum, staffing, facilities, resources (and related finances), evaluation processes, and participation in system-level…

This paper reports the results of a study of the implementation of multicultural education policy initiatives in Australia. An outline of the study's methods follows brief discussions of the emergence of multicultural education as a policy issue and the context of multicultural education in Australia. To assess the impact of multicultural…

Australian school communities participating in the Disadvantaged Schools Program plan their own approaches to improving schooling for students, assisted and supported by consultants; the Disadvantaged Country Areas Program, funded in 1977, differs from the Disadvantaged Schools Program in that whole areas rather than individual schools have been…

The Disadvantaged Country Areas Program in Australia involves a limited number of areas in each State selected according to their relative poverty, special need for improved educational provisions, and lack of opportunities for employment and training for young people. All schools in the declared areas are expected to share the services and…