SVA venture partner, The Song Room, is a national non-profit organisation that provides free, tailored, long-term music and arts-based programs for children in disadvantaged and high need communities.

The Song Room has built on its internationally significant research on the impact of its programs on disadvantaged young people, and further evaluated its programs’ impact for Indigenous communities in Queensland through a successful federally-funded pilot project, Creative Arts and Indigenous Parental Engagement (CAIPE).

The CAIPE program in Queensland is pioneering a new educational approach as it supports Indigenous families and communities to ‘reach in’ to schools and education providers to develop partnerships with them with the aim of enhancing their children’s educational outcomes. Parents and students from over 20 schools and other organisations from Brisbane (urban); Mackay (regional); and Cunnamulla (remote) were engaged by The Song Room over the 18 month program.

The Song Room commissioned respected research consultancy Educational Transformations to conduct an independent research project to develop an evidence base to access the merit of involving Indigenous parents in their children’s education, and the outcomes of their involvement. The study by researcher Dr Tanya Vaughan, Transforming Indigenous education through the Arts, has recently been published and shows striking results, indicating the program had a positive impact on students and parents with improvement noted in literacy, attendance and parental engagement.

The CAIPE program addresses the gap in arts access for disadvantaged schools, with the aim to meet three critical needs of Indigenous students that are widely recognised to impact on their success at school ‘ literacy, school attendance and parental engagement.

The study which involved over 1,000 students, including 155 Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students in Grades 3, 4 and 5 has shown that The Song Room’s CAIPE project achieves the following positive impact and outcomes on participants:

Improved Literacy
The Song Room is 20 times more effective at closing the gap in literacy:

• Research shows that CAIPE closes the gap for Indigenous students by more than 20% in reading and more than 17% in writing and more than 12% in spelling;

• Closed the gap by more than 15% in grammar & punctuation and over 7% in writing in less than a year

Improved School Attendance
CAIPE brings Indigenous kids to school, and keeps them there:

• CAIPE increased Indigenous kids full attendance by more than 8% in Mackay;

• 67 per cent less absenteeism was observed for the regional Mackay Indigenous student cohort (Vaughan 2012)

Parental Engagement
CAIPE brings Indigenous parents to school and improves their children’s education:

• CAIPE increased parents expectations of their children’s school achievement, which has been associated with gains in educational outcomes of at least one year;

• CAIPE connects Indigenous students, parents, teachers and Elders to creative arts and the school

Representation of Local Culture
CAIPE has an educational system that recognises and acknowledges Aboriginal culture and heritage:

• The project was successful due to the inclusion of culturally derived resources which employed the cultural capital of parents, students and community members

Importantly, this compelling new evidence of the The Song Room’s CAIPE project’s impact on Indigenous communities builds on the independent study by Professor Brian Caldwell, funded by Macquarie Group Foundation, which demonstrates that when compared to matched control schools, participants in The Song Room’s arts based interventions achieved a number of important improvements including:

1. Significantly higher school attendance (a 65% reduction in absenteeism);
2. A one year improvement in literacy and academic outcomes, as measured by NAPLAN scores for reading, writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation and numeracy as well as school grades; and
3. Significantly higher Social ‘ Emotional Wellbeing (SEWB) levels when compared to non-participating TSR students.

Of further significance, The Song Room’s program design includes a component to help the schools to create and sustain their own music and arts programs, thus building long term sustainability at a school level and enabling The Song Room to support new schools.

There is heavy demand from disadvantaged schools and high need communities from across Australia to establish The Song Room’s music and arts based engagement programs which specifically tackle the key learning and social and emotional wellbeing challenges. The Song Room is seeking support to engage children positively at school; build their self-esteem; and improve their learning outcomes.

This school and community demand provides social investment opportunities.

A summary of the Transforming Indigenous education through the Arts report, is available from The Song Room.