The Smith Family established the Girls at the Centre program in 2008 at the request of the Alice Springs Indigenous Education and Employment Taskforce, a multi-party voluntary committee with representation from industry, philanthropy, community organisations and government. The brief was to design a program which might meet the needs of girls 'in the middle', i.e. girls in Central Australia who are neither so high risk that they need specialist management nor so well supported they would achieve their aspirations without additional support. The resulting program aims to counteract the high absenteeism and school drop-out rates of teenage girls and to support them to build constructive, mature relationships with each other, their schools, families and the broader community.
This evaluation of the program was commissioned in 2011 specifically to: (1) measure the extent to which the program meets its objectives to improve the literacy, develop life goals and life skills of young Indigenous women at Centralian Middle School (CMS) in Alice Springs, identify the significant success factors and document the success stories; (2) assess the scalability of the program for adaption to other high need sites such as large regional centres and urban locations; and (3) provide information on the effectiveness of the program’s strategies to increase retention of young Indigenous women to Year 12.
The conclusions and recommendations are presented under the following headings: achievement of program objectives; potential for improvements and relationship to other programs; and issues for scalability. A total of nine recommendations are made. The evaluation found that the program is highly valued by school staff, girl participants and their families. It has a positive impact on life goals and skills in demonstrable ways and appears to positively impact on Year 12 retention. Key success factors include the program's coaching team, holism and inclusivity, parental engagement, girls' input into decision making, resources and facilities, decentralisation/independence from school and government, and formal partnerships and strategic alliances, networks and coalitions.
Edited excerpts from publication.
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