Australia continues to be faced with the profound challenge of overcoming unacceptable inequality in education, training and employment outcomes for Indigenous people.  This has now been brought into sharp focus by the Council of Australian Government’s (COAG) Productivity and Indigenous Reform Agendas; establishing expectations on all jurisdictions to demonstrate sustainable improvements from early childhood through to workforce participation.

The 2009 National Indigenous Education Conference will build on the success of the previous Conference held in Newcastle in 2006, as well as the World Indigenous People’s Conference on Education, held in Melbourne in 2008. The conference theme, Strength in Community: Closing the Gap, emphasises the challenges of accelerating outcomes for Indigenous students and successfully engaging Indigenous communities with education and training in order to strengthen culture and improve quality of life for our people.

The Conference will be predicated on three key assumptions:

• We must learn from the past – we cannot continue to repeat mistakes when we know what is required to achieve success;

• We must invest in the future – by empowering our youth and listening to their voices;

• We must achieve breakthroughs and generate sustainable, systemic change.

Indigenous communities, students, carers and parents, as well as teachers, researchers and administrators all have a responsibility in responding to the challenge. We look forward to meeting with you in Hobart to explore how we will succeed in ‘closing the gap’ and building ‘strength in community’.

Working Group

• Greg Lehman

• Professor John Lester

• Sonia Brown

• Carla Jennings

• Theresa Sainty

• Alison Stone

• Nigel Brown

• Sherri Bewley