No school no pool

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In the dry, hot lands of the Northern Territory, a community is encouraging its children to attend school by providing a cool pool for them to swim in. Francesca Newby reports.

No school, no pool. It’s a simple principle and one that has delivered amazing benefits to the towns that use it, as well as a dose of controversy – some claim that the policy infantilises communities. But when the school leadership team in Wadeye, Northern Territory, decided they needed to find a way to get more kids turning up to school, they ignored the controversy and instead concentrated on the positive results the policy had achieved in other remote areas.

Throughout the country, remote communities are working to have swimming pools of their own built. In Halls Creek, Western Australia, for example, the community has recently won a commitment to matched funding from the Federal Government and the agreement of its council to raise the remainder of the funds. Plans have been drawn up and work is expected to start later this year, with the pool to be completed in early 2006.

Wadeye is a small town with a population of about 2,500, located in the vast wilderness of the Northern Territory, about 400km south-west of Darwin. It struggles with the typical health and social problems that remote indigenous communities face, but over the past ten years its locals have been striving to make a difference to their community.

That determination has resulted in Wadeye’s elders agreeing to impose a ‘no school, no pool’ rule on the approximately 700 children who live in the community – children are allowed to use the local pool only if they attend school. “It took us ten years to get the pool built,” says Tobias Nganbe, co-principal of the Wadeye School and a member of the regional leadership team. “We reckoned it was the thing that would work best for us.”

The pool opened earlier this year and the school was initially overwhelmed by the number of children wanting to attend. “Once the pool was built, and the rule made, we ended up with so many kids coming to school we didn’t have room for them all,” explains Tobias. “Now we’ve got the extra classrooms and teachers, things are starting to settle down.”

‘No school no pool’ has now become championed by the government, and is federal policy for rural communities throughout Australia. Its success in Wadeye supports the idea that people respect their rights only when they come with responsibilities. And for those in the communities, reduced truancy isn’t the only gain. “The kids’ health is so much better,” says Tobias. “We used to see loads of skin diseases and eye problems like trachoma; now we have almost none. Seeing these beautiful, healthy little kids running around with their skin all glossy makes it worth all the work to raise the money.”

And the benefits of the swimming pool have touched a much wider section of the community than just its children. “What we’re seeing, that we didn’t really expect, is the way that the pool has brought the whole community closer together,” Tobias reflects. “More than just making sure that their kids are going to school, we’re seeing parents and grandparents making the trip into town to pick up their kids and go to the pool with them.”

Across the heart of this hot, dry land a raft of remote communities is signing up for the matched funding available from the government to build their own pools. “We did this,” says Tobias. “We raised our share of the money from everyone in the community. Everyone here owns a little piece of that pool, and everyone gets to live in a better place because of the work that we all did.”

Photography: Glenn Campbell/Fairfax Photos