Over the past five years Townsville Catholic Education has delivered the Emerging Leaders Incentive Scheme, an impactful Indigenous Education program enabling students to strive for and pave pathways to become proud, confident and capable leaders of tomorrow. The program focuses on addressing educational disadvantages for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. 

After 5 years of Emerging Leaders, the program funding was due to end at the close of the 2022 school year, however Townsville Catholic Education is excited to announce that the project has been officially extended and will continue on until December 2024. Moving forward the next iteration of Emerging Leaders will build upon its success, and create new focus areas on formalised partnerships with outside agencies, student wellbeing, and post school pathways.

The Emerging Leaders Incentive Scheme was fully designed, developed and driven by three female Aboriginal educators after receiving a grant from National Indigenous Australians Agency. The program was developed in conjunction with Indigenous voices and knowledges to enable students to engage more fully in their learning and create greater opportunities to achieve improved outcomes that lead to success in their secondary years of schooling

It also reduces the cost barrier in obtaining a Catholic education across the Townsville Diocese. In 2021 alone, the program supported over 540 students across TCE’s 11 secondary schools, including 2 boarding schools.

Since the program’s inception, over 1,700 students have been invested in improving their attendance rates, achieving academic growth and increasing their personal engagement levels in school and the wider community.

“The impact the Emerging Leaders Incentive Scheme has had on Indigenous student outcomes has been outstanding,” said Tammi Webber, Indigenous Education Adviser, Townsville Catholic Education. 

“I am in awe of our Emerging Leaders Coordinators and Mentors based in each school who continue to work hard to ensure the program’s effectiveness for our students.”

Everything about Emerging Leaders is best practice in action: mentoring, personal goal setting, tracking and case management, etc. The difference is that this is all done through a strengths based lens of culture. 

“From our first initial draft planning of what it could look like, we identified that a positive sense of culture and identity needed to be a key that would drive success. It makes us extremely proud to acknowledge that Aboriginal agency and determination provided the basis of so many successful outcomes for our students, our schools, our families and our communities over the past 5 years,” said Tammi. 

Townsville Catholic Education is committed to Indigenous Education and ensuring students have access to culture, role models and truth telling within their schools, and is proud to continue the Emerging Leaders legacy into the future.