'Engage the community' - it's almost a mantra whenever people talk about Indigenous education. But what does it really mean? Who is this community? And what is the difference in outcomes if you really engage, rather than just paying lip-service to the idea and doing what you think is right anyway?

One community consultation model which has rapidly become regarded as best practice is that instituted by Yule Brook College, a middle school (Years 8, 9, 10) in the light industrial Perth suburb of Maddington. Last year Yule Brook won the Milton Thorne Award for an Outstanding School-Based Initiative for Aboriginal Students.

All that Yule Brook did was to engage with the Aboriginal community - but that well-worn phrase hides a lot of complexity and a lot of hard work.

"It was a long process, because we were determined to do it right," says Michael Camilleri, Acting Principal of Yule Brook College. "The whole process was very transparent. We knew that the more people we involved, and the more deeply they were involved, the stronger it would be."

The 2000 school review made clear that there were ongoing issues relating to Indigenous students (who comprise about 17 per cent of total enrolment), including literacy, numeracy, attendance and retention concerns. Staff discussion groups determined, in the best tradition of Dare To Lead, that something must be done, and something could be done. A small working party, comprising then-Principal Terry Boland, Michael Camilleri, Norm Anderson AEIO as well as Consultant Dr Phillip Paioff and Tony Shaw and representatives from ASSPA and the community, set out to identify the goals.

"Then we opened the communication channels and invited everyone in the Aboriginal community to an open forum at the college. The main aim was to open the doors and make people feel welcomed. It's very important to physically get the community into schools; this also involves acknowledging that often these parents might not have had good experiences in their own schooling," Michael says.

The first forum was attended by 75 people, including representatives of all key stakeholder groups and prominent Noongar people from the wider community. Over the next months, the Indigenous parent body was asked what it wanted and how this could best be achieved. Indigenous students were surveyed regarding their personal needs, career goals, likes and dislikes.

The Aboriginal Community Committee was formed, which produced the Yule Brook College & Aboriginal Community Agreement. This document has three sections: Basic principles and understandings; Yule Brook College Commitment (what the school pledges to do); Aboriginal community commitment (what the Aboriginal parents, elders and students pledge to do.) It was formally presented to the school's Indigenous community at an 'acceptance ceremony' at the end of 2001, attended by parents, students, staff and Education Department representatives..

A large copy of the Agreement hangs in the school's front office, alongside several Aboriginal artworks. Michael Camilleri says the symbolic component of the process has been important, both in representing the depth of commitment on all sides, and by making public and permanent the school's decision for improvement.

The next phase of the program was to put the Agreement into practice. The primary tool for this was the establishment of Individual Education Programs (IEPs) with each Aboriginal student. There was also an Aboriginal Youth Committee formed, and an open evening every term designed to maintain community contact.

The upshot? "Our retention rates for those Aboriginal students who complete Year 10 going on to Year 11 is close to 100 per cent," Michael says, although he adds that this figure is only for students who complete the year, and a question-mark remains as to how long some remain in Year 11.

"Our ASSPA has been strengthened through this process. Recognition of the work we've been involved in has provided a sense of achievement and pride for Aboriginal parents and students. However, you can't stop. You've always got to induct and engage the new students coming through. What I've discovered is that if you stand back, momentum can falter."

Michael says an important component of Yule Brook's process was enlisting the help of an external consultancy firm, in this case IMC. "Having them as a sounding board, and with the outside perspective they brought in, was invaluable," he says.

Dr Phillip Paioff (Paioff Consulting) says, "It was really refreshing to work with educators who were full-on from the word go. They really wanted to engage in a true joint venture between the school and the local Aboriginal community. In terms of cost-effectiveness and the actual outcomes, this program stands up extremely well against many others that I've seen. I think it's exceptionally good."

The ongoing nuts-and-bolts work revolves around administering the IEPs. "One thing we discovered through the IEPs was that many of the kids never had goals," says Charles Coffman, acting associate principal of Yule Brook. "They never had the notion of why they were coming to school and what they wanted to do next. We've found that when people set goals for themselves, they usually achieve them.

"The school had been setting goals for Aboriginal students, but the results weren't great; we started requiring parents and students to set goals too, and there's been a dramatic turnaround. With the IEPs, parents, teachers and form teachers sit down together and map out two or three goals of key achievement, then reconvene once a term to review and replan.

"It's about treating people as individuals; that has probably made more difference than anything else. We try to make sure the goals are realistic, but we want them to aspire to either TAFE or a university education. We're finding, a couple of years along, that the students that started with us here are starting to achieve those sort of goals."

Charles recalls that the school always made "a big fuss" about NAIDOC week, but this compartmentalised the commitment to Indigenous education into one neat week. "We now celebrate Aboriginal culture across the school and across the year; it's not just a NAIDOC thing, and it's not just for the Aboriginal kids. It's for the whole school, at every year level, and right through the curriculum.

"Despite our best intentions, there was a strong disjunction between what we thought were the needs of our Aboriginal students, and what they thought their needs were. Some of our original ideas didn't work, basically. Our kids are very urbanised, a lot of them don't come from a strong traditional Aboriginal culture in their home environment, and many of them probably identify more strongly with basketball players from North America and rap culture than with traditional culture. We were trying to impose traditional values and ideas about Aboriginal culture onto these kids where it wasn't appropriate, but we've learned along the way."

This learning was formalised with ongoing Professional Development for all staff in cultural awareness. In association with ASSPA, Michael produced a pamphlet on cultural awareness for teachers entitled "Working with our Aboriginal Children" which identifies local belief patterns, effective communication and learning strategies, as an aid to effective teaching.

Yule Brook College is a school that has taken the time - and all involved emphasise that it is not a fast process - to listen to what its Aboriginal students and their parents really think and really require. It has backed this with a whole-school commitment, and a determination to keep doing the work rather than falling for the furphy that the work has all been done once the plan has been written on paper.

Listening, learning, acting: that is what it means to truly 'engage the community'.