Small-town school registers major impact

October 26 2011

Cooktown State School has been named the 2011 NAB Schools First Queensland State Impact Award winner.

The win takes Cooktown's Schools First award money to $100,000 and earns it the right to represent Queensland at the national level.

With partners Cape York Health Service District and the Department of Communities, Cooktown State School's weekly cultural Aunties and Uncles program is a school-community partnership set up to engage, empower and develop healthy and confident social and personal skills for students.

Principal Jillian Blennerhassett described receiving the award as overwhelming, and said the partnership would meet to discuss its use but it would definitely enable the extension of the Aunties and Uncles program.

'We have a lady who's an elder here who's a linguist, and she's very concerned that the Indigenous language could die out,' Ms Blennerhassett said.

'She has a program that she wants to get for the students so the students can start documenting the language, so we'll have that. But at this early stage we have lots of ideas of what we want to do with the money, but nothing planned yet.'

The Aunties and Uncles program was one of 12 Queensland school-community partnerships to receive a $50,000 NAB Schools First Local Impact award last month.

The Cooktown partnership receives an additional $50,000 for its state win and will now represent Queensland at the NAB Schools First National Impact Awards next month, where the 2011 National Award winner will be announced.

NAB Schools First is a partnership between NAB, the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) and the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) which recognises and rewards outstanding school-community partnerships that lead to improved student outcomes.

NAB head of education Rebecca Sherwill said by the end of this year, Schools First will have awarded over $15 million to 310 school-community partnerships around Australia.

'For the third year in succession, NAB Schools First has received more than 850 applications from schools around the country - proving that there is a need among schools for financial support and recognition of their outstanding initiatives,' she said.

'Cooktown State School is an outstanding and worthy state award winner. The weekly cultural Aunties and Uncles program brings together the community to ensure that the students learn not only about their own culture, but also what underpins everything - respect.'

The State Impact Award winning partnership will now travel to Melbourne to attend the NAB Schools First National Impact Awards on November 23.

The national award winner, to be announced at this event, will receive a total of up to $500,000 in awards funding to develop and enhance their school-community partnership.

Schools and community groups interested in finding out about 2012 NAB Schools First award funding can visit the Schools First website.