Noel Pearson was born in Cooktown and was brought up at Hope Vale, a Lutheran Mission in the Cape York Peninsula. After primary school at Hope Vale, he became a boarder at St Peters Lutheran College in Brisbane and completed a history and law degree at Sydney University.
On 20th June 2007, Pearson argued for the intervention in relation to Aboriginal child sexual abuse that led to John Howard initiating the "National Emergency Response" when health workers and police moved in, took control and introduced a ban on alcohol.
Now there's a real education revolution going on in the remote Cape York town of Aurukun. Noel Pearson has imported a radical teaching program from America into a school where more than half the students could barely read at kindergarten level. In terms of indigenous disadvantage, Aurukun is rock bottom with NAPLAN test results 70 per cent lower than the national benchmark.
Aurukun is the Cape's most violent town, driven by gambling, drugs and alcohol. But Pearson has stuck his neck out and introduced the American-designed Direct Instruction Program. Teachers deliver scripted lessons according to a strictly prescribed, methodical program in literacy and mathematics. Now after just one and a half terms, the program is producing excellent results.
This week, the 17th week of the DI program, a year 4 girl named Imani Tamwoy became the first in the school to have caught up to her grade level in reading. The grade 5 to 7 students managed to master 76 per cent of the kindergarten program in the first 11 weeks, and the pre-kindy class of four year olds, is already 40 per cent through the kindergarten language program.
Recently, Pearson visited the school with his five year old son Charlie, a two hour charter flight from his Cairns home. He said "I'm surprised, I thought in Aurukun we'd have a hell of a time with behaviour.... I thought Aurukun would be a special case with the notoriety of the school and the community. But it hasn't been, and the great thing is we're doing it with your stock standard Education Queensland teacher. This is the biggest surprise and they're doing a bloody great job".
Pearson travelled to Oregon last year to meet the founder of DI, Professor Siegfried Engelmann. Although there was fierce resistance from some teachers and government officials, a $7 million, three year trial in Aurukun and Coen schools started at the beginning of the year with the cautious support of the Queensland Education Department.
The new principal, Geoff Higham 59, remembers how students in years 8 and 9 used to bring iron bars to school. "The senior boys were out of control. They were reading at kindy level and they hated everything to do with school. It's hard to believe the transformation in just 15 or 16 weeks. This is a wonderful system. All the children are put into ability groups so one one is failing. The teachers aren't failing. The children aren't failing.... it's a magnificent successful educational experiment". DI agrees with his personal education philosophy - that every child can learn given a disciplined routine and effective instruction. But even in his wildest dreams, he hadn't known how effective DI could be.
Principal Higham has taught in schools from Kenya to Thursday Island and described himself as an old-fashioned "chalk and talk" teacher. His previous schools have been described as places where even the grass sits up straight. "I have no doubt the pupils will be at the national level in maths and English in three years' time and many children will be one, two or three years above that level" he said.
In teacher Sarah Travers' kindy class, she wears a microphone around her neck so the kids with chronic ear infections can hear what she's saying. It seems to work because her 10 five-year-old
students sit attentively on the floor, calling out sounds as she points to phonetic symbols in a book. A 1.45 at the tail end of a busy school week, their concentration and focus is remarkable.
Colleen Page, a 24 year old teacher from the Sunshine Coast, in her third year at Aurukun says the change DI has had on her pupils is marked. "They thrive on it. It's really good to compare the last two years with this year .... previously the kids would be running around your classroom, not listening. Now they're confident about participation in class". She tells the story of the eight year old boy who came to her one morning proudly telling her how he had applied his previous day's lesson. "Miss, I saw a frog and I said "You are an amphibian. You are born in water and raised on land".
Every Thursday, 120 pages of detailed test scores and information about each student and class is faxed to a DI centre in North America to be analaysed. The following Tuesday, the school leaders have a conference call with DI experts in Oregon, about any problems. The children seem to thrive on the organised routine, even those difficult older kids in years 9 and 10 have responded and it's heartbreaking when you think about lost opportunities.
On teachers' shirts, on banners and in classrooms, Noel Pearson's motto for his education revolution is "Get Ready. Work Hard. Be Good". If this 3 year trial is successful, the mind boggles at the possibilities for other remote Aboriginal communities all over the country.
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