Timor-Leste: Transforming Education through Partnership in a Small Post-Conflict State

Timor-Leste: Transforming Education Through Partnership in a Small Post-Conflict State

COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION: A Diversity of Voices

Volume 35

Series Editors

Allan PitmanUniversity of Western Ontario, Canada Miguel A. PereyraUniversity of Granada, Spain

Editorial Board

Ali Abdi, University of Alberta, CanadaClementina Acedo, UNESCO International Bureau of EducationMark Bray, University of Hong Kong, ChinaChristina Fox, University of Wollongong, AustraliaSteven Klees, University of Maryland, USANagwa Megahed, Ain Shams University, EgyptCrain Soudain, University of Cape Town, South AfricaDavid Turner, University of Glamorgan, EnglandMedardo Tapia Uribe, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico

Scope

Comparative and International Education: A Diversity of Voices aims to provide a comprehensive range of titles, making available to readers work from across the comparative and international education research community. Authors will represent as broad a range of voices as possible, from geographic, cultural and ideological standpoints. The editors are making a conscious effort to disseminate the work of newer scholars as well as that of well-established writers. The series includes authored books and edited works focusing upon current issues and controversies in a field that is undergoing changes as profound as the geopolitical and economic forces that are reshaping our worlds. The series aims to provide books which present new work, in which the range of methodologies associated with comparative education and international education are both exemplified and opened up for debate. As the series develops, it is intended that new writers from settings and locations not frequently part of the English language discourse will find a place in the list.

Timor-Leste: Transforming Education Through Partnership in a Small Post-Conflict State

Jude ButcherAustralian Catholic University, Australia

Peter BastianAustralian Catholic University, Australia

Margie BeckInstituto Católico para a Formação de Professores, Timor-Leste

Tony d’ArbonAustralian Catholic University, Australia

Youssef TaoukAustralian Catholic University, Australia

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-94-6209-882-4 (paperback)ISBN: 978-94-6209-883-1 (hardback)ISBN: 978-94-6209-884-8 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858,3001 AW Rotterdam,The Netherlandshttps://www.sensepublishers.com/

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 2015 Sense Publishers

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword Most Rev Basilio do Nascimento, Brother Jeffrey Crowe and Professor Greg Craven vii

Preface by the Series EditorsAllan Pitman and Miguel Pereyra ix

Acknowledgements xi

Glossary xiii

Chapter 1: Introduction 1

PART I: Understanding the ChallengeChapter 2: Timor-Leste: An Historical Overview 9

A Portuguese Colony 9Indonesian Control 13The Collapse of Indonesian Control 15A New Nation Emerges 17Problems for the Nation 20

Chapter 3: Timor-Leste: An Educational Overview 23Education during Portuguese Colonisation 23Education under Indonesian Rule 24The Catholic Church and Education 26The Referendum and its Aftermath 28Reconstruction: Development of a New Education System 29The Catholic Church 32Primary Education 33Secondary Education 34Tertiary Education 35The Language Conundrum 35Conclusion 37

PART II: Committing to the PartnershipChapter 4: History of the Partnership 41

Origins of the Partnership 41The Establishment of Catholic Teachers College and ICFP 44Partnership with Australian Catholic University 46Course Development 50Conclusion 52

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Chapter 5: Scope of the Partnership 63ICFP 63Broadening the Scope of the Partnership 70Conclusion 71

PART III: Transforming EducationChapter 6: Domains and Responsibilities in the Partnership 75

Foundational Values 76Institutional Deliverables 79Institutional Infrastructure 82Institutional Sustainability 86Conclusion 88

Chapter 7: Evaluating the Partnership 91ICFP as a Quality Tertiary Institution 91Principles of International Development 95Catholic Social Teaching 98Post-conflict Small State 99Conclusion 100

Chapter 8: Conclusion 101Sharing a Common Vision 102Respect for Partners 103A Long Term and Evolving Commitment 103Working within Capacity 105Ensuring Ongoing Credibility and Quality 105Recognising Broader Development Goals 106Ensuring Local Participation, Responsibility and Support 106

Appendix 1: Marist Brothers who have served in ICFP 109

Appendix 2: Staff Employed at ICFP (at time of publication) 111

References 113

About the Authors 119

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FOREWORD

Education has been recognised as an important factor in helping to overcome disadvantages among the people of developing nations. In the case of Timor-Leste, the after effects of its struggle for independence and the small size of the State left it with grave problems in providing educational capacity building in the years after 1999. In response, a partnership was developed between the Diocese of Baucau, the Marist Brothers in Australia, Australian Catholic University (ACU) and Instituto Católico para a Formação de Professores (ICFP) at Baucau. It initially aimed at providing in-service support for current teachers and then a bachelor’s degree programme to train primary teachers while also developing the Institute to a point where it would be Timorese-operated.

At first, the goals of the partnership were modest and specific but over time this has broadened into an ongoing and multi-varied form of co-operation. Inspired by Catholic social teaching and an awareness of development aid principles, the partnership has been able to draw upon a wider group of supporters both within Timor-Leste and from Australia and Europe in order to give the project a greater scope. Over time, ICFP has created widely recognised courses and qualifications for its students. Staff and students have also come to enjoy a high standing in the community and good employment prospects. The Institution is continuing to develop its profile in teaching, research, scholarship and community engagement.

The purpose of this book is to examine the co-operative partnership in the development of capacity building in education in Timor-Leste between 1999 and 2012. The study highlights the transformative power of such value based co-operative partnerships.

Most Rev Basilio do NascimentoBishop Diocese of BaucauTimor-Leste

Br Jeffrey Crowe fmsProvincialMarist Brothers Province of Australia

Professor Greg CravenVice-ChancellorAustralian Catholic University

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. PREFACE BY THE SERIES EDITORS

The nature of international collaboration requires a level of mutuality between the collaborating parties in order to attain a successful outcome. This is particularly the case in those situations in which a project involves institutions with widely differ-ent resource bases, both in a qualitative as well as quantitative sense.

If the project reported upon in this book is taken as a case, then there are valuable lessons to be learned. The collaboration is between various organisations with corresponding ideological/religious understandings and within that there is a commonality of mission. The religious underpinning of the project is in line historically of the role of the Catholic Church in Timor-Leste from Portuguese colonial times to the present. There is a clear agreement that the project is to move to full local operation: this is an essential ingredient in both attaining sustainability and in fulfilling the local group’s mission and aspiration.

The collaboration is based on the partners deriving outcomes that are not identical but recognise the differences in what constitutes institutional success on the broader scale: in the case of ICFP and the Marist Brothers a viable and respected programme; for the Australian university a successful production of research results as well as addressing the religious promulgation role (as evidenced by the support indicated in the letter from the Bishop).

The reader should study this book in the context of the successes and failures of a multitude of international “development projects” which have been supported by organisations as diverse as the World Bank, government-backed organisations such as USAid, CIDA and SIDA, and NGO’s of all types.

Allan PitmanMiguel PereyraSeries Editors

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The development and capacity building endeavour of transforming education through the Instituto Católico para a Formação de Professores (ICFP) and its partnership with the Bishop of Baucau, the Marist Brothers, and Australian Catholic University is testimony not only to the work of this group but to the determination of the people of Timor-Leste to build a new society. The warmth and openness of the welcome offered by the Timorese staff and students of ICFP have been much appreciated by the authors of this book.

The authors would also like to acknowledge the vision and courage of Bishop Basilio do Nascimento, Bishop of the Diocese of Baucau, and Brother Jim Jolley, Province Leader of the Melbourne Province of the Marist Brothers in Australia in 1999 and subsequent Province Leaders. Bishop Basilio and Brother Jim recognised the power of a faith-based educational capacity building partnership for establishing, developing and sustaining ICFP as a quality higher education provider within Timor-Leste. The Marist Brothers in their newly formed Marist Brothers’ Province of Australia with Brother Jeffrey Crowe as Province Leader have maintained and extended their commitment to the partnership and to the people of Timor-Leste.

It should also be acknowledged that ACU’s community engagement commitment to capacity building in Timor-Leste was initiated through the leadership of Professor Peter Sheehan AO as Vice-Chancellor. This commitment has been extended under his successor, Professor Greg Craven, who has endorsed the current range of projects on education, health and wellbeing for the people of Timor-Leste.

Educational capacity building in Timor-Leste was initially reliant in part upon the peacekeeping work of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET). Departments of the interim government of Timor-Leste provided strategic directions and policies within which ICFP was established. The Ministry of Education in Timor-Leste has subsequently been responsible for in-country policies within which ICFP has operated.

The Australian government, particularly through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has supported, in various ways, the involvement of the Marist Brothers, Australian Catholic University and other partners. This Department provided funding in recent years for staff of ICFP to undertake post-graduate study through ACU. The continued funding from organisations such as Misereor in Germany, Woodside Petroleum, AusAID, Marist Asia-Pacific Solidarity, and the eMerge Foundation contributed substantially towards the staffing and infrastructure costs of ICFP. The financial, volunteer and moral support of a number of people and organisations in Australia, including Palms Australia, has made study at ICFP possible for a significant number of Timorese students.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors acknowledge Dr John Murray’s close editing of the draft of the book and Jimmy Kim’s excellent work in formatting the text and ensuring correct bibliography and references. They also appreciate the confidence of Michel Lokhorst from Sense Publishers in accepting the submission of this book and for his understanding of the role, nature and importance of transformative educational capacity building in a post-conflict small nation state.

A Note on Terminology

Until the 1999 vote for independence from Indonesia, the name ‘East Timor’ has been used to describe this area. Although the new nation was not fully independent of United Nations control until 2002, the term ‘Timor-Leste’ is used for convenience from 1999 to the present.

Also before 1999 the local people are referred to as ‘East Timorese’ and after 1999 either as ‘Timorese’ or ‘the people of Timor-Leste’.

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GLOSSARY

ACU Australian Catholic UniversityAQAN ASEAN Quality Assurance NetworkASDT Association for a Democratic East TimorAUQA Australian Universities Quality AgencyCASEPET Caritas Sweden Educational Project for East TimorCTC Catholic Teachers CollegeCNRT National Council of Timorese ResistanceESRP Emergency School Recovery ProjectIACE Institute for Advancing Community EngagementICFP Instituto Católico para a Formação de ProfessoresIDPs Internally Displaced PersonsINQAAHE International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher

EducationISF International Stabilisation ForceJAM Joint Assessment MissionOECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and DevelopmentMAPS Marist Asia-Pacific SolidarityMECYS Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and SportMoEC Ministry of Education and CultureMOU Memorandum of UnderstandingNAAAA National Agency for Academic Assessment and Accreditation (also

known as ANAAA)NGO Non-Government OrganisationTAFE Technical and Further EducationUDT Democratic Union of TimorUN United NationsUNAMET United Nations Assistance Mission to Timor-LesteUNDAF United Nations Development Assistance FrameworkUNDP United Nations Development ProgrammeUNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural OrganisationUNICEF United Nations Children’s FundUNMISET United Nations Mission of Support in East TimorUNMIT United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-LesteUNTAET United Nations Transitional Administration in East TimorUNTL Universidade Nacional Timor Lorosa’e (Timor-Leste)

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

On 30 August 1999, the people of Timor-Leste voted overwhelmingly for independence from their previously forced integration into Indonesia. This result led to widespread violence from pro-Indonesian groups until the intervention of United Nations peacekeepers ensured the final security of the people’s independence. The new nation, supported by many international groups and agencies, including a United Nations transitional administration, emerged as one of the poorest in the world. Timor-Leste suffered the combined problems of being a small state in a post-conflict situation. War had destroyed much of the new nation’s infrastructure and it had limited resources to provide for a growing population that had low life expectancy and high levels of illiteracy. Timor-Leste’s future was to be partly shaped by its past, especially by traditional culture and its inherited colonial legacies from Portugal and Indonesia. It was also to be influenced by its educated elite returning from exile and holding differing views on development and also by international agencies sometimes wanting to impose pre-determined policies upon the new nation. In addition, the Catholic Church was significantly influential in the whole country, and especially in the field of education. In what proved to be extremely complicated situations, Timor-Leste began the difficult task of twenty-first century nation building.

Although authorities do not agree on how best to define a small state, most cite population size as the main benchmark. Small states are generally categorised as having populations of up to two million (Crossley, Bray, Colin, Martin, Atchoaréna, & Bainton, 2009, p. 5; Randma-Liiv, 2002, pp. 374-375). Three out of four developing small states are also islands (Bacchus, 2008, p. 128). Timor-Leste, largely located on the eastern half of the island of Timor and with a current population of around one million, fits into this pattern. Benedict (1966, pp. 25-26) has argued that such states are not simply smaller versions of larger ones. People in these societies are more interdependent, interact more frequently in social situations and play several roles because these societies may provide a large number of such roles in the politico-ritual sphere but little specialisation in the economic and technical areas. In this regard, small states differ greatly from large countries and most of these characteristics can be shown to be true for Timor-Leste. This small nation also faced various post-conflict vulnerabilities including struggling to have its voice heard among international organisations and its neighbouring nation states, adopting policies that were sometimes not appropriate to its economic, social and political realities, and grappling with the problems of increasing globalisation (Kelsey, 2005;

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McGillivray, Naudé, & Santos-Paulino, 2008; Bacchus, 2008). As well, Timor-Leste being in a post-conflict stage typically had an international peacekeeping force initially deployed by the United Nations in 1999 to maintain order. It was, however, atypical in that the new nation was subsequently administered by the United Nations rather than by its own government. Elections and a new constitution were to be put in place under this administration and during this process, international aid and reconstruction initially took place. This meant that the nation was not always the master of such development policies and some aid agencies operated to their own agendas.

As in many post-conflict and emerging small states, the development of education was seen as a critical factor for Timor-Leste’s future. (World Bank, 2005; Paulson & Rappleye, 2007; Hawrylenko, 2010; UNICEF, 2011). Education has long been seen as playing a key role in creating social cohesion, facilitating economic recovery and repairing shattered societies (World Bank, 2005, p. 27; Lowicki, 1999, p. 4; O’Donoghue & Clarke, 2013, p. 13). It underpins the realisation of other development goals but there are often high expectations on the education system at a time when it may have been adversely impacted by conflict. Studies focusing on post-conflict nations argue that developing and reforming education can take decades and is a long-term process (World Bank, 2005, p. xvii; Buckland, 2006, p. 8). Educational capacity building therefore needs a long-term commitment if systemic change is to be achieved.

However, small states, peaceful or in post-conflict situations, often face major problems in providing this education for their citizens. There are often limitations on their ability to achieve economies of scale in the provision of educational services while the effect of geographical distribution of their population can stymie efforts to create equal educational opportunities, especially for those living in remote areas. It is therefore quite possible that education, for all of its benefits, can also increase social inequality as some sections of the community obtain it while others miss out. As well, developing culturally relevant curriculum materials and being able to provide appropriate higher educational opportunities are major problems (Bacchus, 2008). These states also face financial constraints to expand and modernise their education systems and problems in attaining sufficient qualified teachers and educational personnel to design and implement development policies (Peters, 2001, p. 45). Often qualified teachers are snapped up by international NGOs while there are challenges meeting the needs of out-of-school youth (UNICEF, 2011, p. 10).

Among the efforts needed to overcome these problems is local community participation. External support for education should build upon – rather than competes with – local community and authority initiatives. UNESCO (2011) points out, external actors and/or government do not develop the education sector only, but by “lower level beneficiaries”. It argues “ownership and sustainability should be strengthened by working alongside existing country resources and systems of assessing, strategizing, managing and evaluating capacities and processes” (p. 116). Nevertheless, it also has to be recognised that the closely knit and personalised

INTRODUCTION

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relationships existing within small states can also have a direct impact on the dynamics of developing their education systems (Farrugia, & Attard, 1989; Bacchus, 2008). For example, in Fiji villagers were found to be reluctant to comment adversely on a school management committee that might have mismanaged its local school funds because of the strong ties that existed among the population and their desire to avoid conflict in the community (Bacchus, 2008, p. 134).

Higher education institutions can also have a disproportionate impact on small states than in bigger nations because of their limited numbers and prestige. However, the higher education sector may lack the checks and balances that are more evident in bigger systems (Crossley et. al., 2009, p. 5). Small states may find it difficult to offer a large array of educational opportunities in the tertiary sector considering the small number of students they have, and consequently are unable to increase their human capital. They sometimes resort to education abroad as an alternative. This option, however, aggravates rather than mitigates the problem of brain drain – the emigration of skilled workers to developed countries – because many of the students who are educated abroad choose to remain abroad. Furthermore, the poorest people in small states typically cannot afford to study abroad (Atchoaréna, Da Graҫa, & Marquez, 2008, p. 172). Docquier and Schiff (2009, p. 16) have shown that between 1990 and 2000, the rate of brain drain from small states was 36.1% as opposed to 7.0% for developing countries as a whole.

This book uses Timor-Leste as a case study of a post-conflict small state to explore one aspect of capacity building in education through a co-operative partnership. This partnership was principally between the Diocese of Baucau, the Marist Brothers in Australia, Australian Catholic University and Instituto Católico para a Formação de Professores (ICFP) at Baucau. Other development groups and agencies have sometimes been part of this network but the focus of this study is upon the four principal partners in the project. It is hoped that the study will make a contribution to the literature on education in post-conflict small nations because there is very little research on the impact of effective long-term educational partnerships in such states.

Since 1999 a number of international agencies and other bodies have been involved in what they consider to be ‘partnerships’ with local organisations in Timor-Leste. These often involved an external organisation working with some local group or organisation in Timor-Leste in a contractual arrangement and were concerned with the short-term agendas that are often too characteristic of international aid. Medenhall examined the example of a partnership between the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and UNICEF in teacher training in Angola in the aftermath of that country’s conflict. It outlined the frustrations partners faced because of lack of consultation and co-ordination, especially when the NRC had the impression that “UNICEF wanted to run their own race” without consulting their partners (Mendenhall, 2008, p. 152).

The partnership described in this book has been holistic in its scope, intending to be aware of the interests of all parties, open-ended in its time commitment and willing to include and foster capacities from a network of support groups. From its very beginning, the partnership was directed at support for the local people and not

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just the immediate delivery of results. While the short-term aim was to establish a primary teacher education college for Timor-Leste, the long-term aim was for this Institute to become a sustainable body fully incorporated into the culture of the country and led and staffed by Timorese personnel: a process we have called ‘Timorisation’.

Over time, ICFP created internationally recognised courses and qualifications for its students. Staff and students enjoy a high standing in the community and good employment prospects. The Institution is developing a profile in its commitment to teaching, research, scholarship and community engagement. Nevertheless, these developments have not been without difficulties. Learning from experience has been important in planning for future development directions especially as many aid agencies lag well behind in devoting resources to researching what has been achieved in their specific programmes (Wood, 2011). The study outlines the history of the partnership and considers the successes and challenges, as well as the lessons that may have a bearing on its future developments.

The original vision for the Institute came from the Bishop of Baucau who realised the necessity for such an institution and provided his endorsement and considerable social and political influence to initiate the project. The Marist Brothers and ACU were well placed to be involved in this initiative. Geographically, they were Australian-based and therefore, relatively close to the island and had the advantage of widespread community and government support within Australia for the Timorese people. Institutionally, they were both successful in the areas of teaching and teacher education with the Marists also having an extensive commitment to teaching projects in other developing nations of the Pacific region. Ideologically, they were committed to the broad principles of Catholic social teaching that included, among other things, a strong belief that education is a key to overcoming disadvantage. ACU had been established in 1991 through the amalgamation of various Catholic colleges across the eastern states of Australia which had been offering nationally approved courses in primary and secondary teacher education, and health sciences while courses in Arts, Information Technology, Psychology and Business Studies had also been developed in some of the colleges. The Marist Brothers, along with the Christian Brothers, were among the founding congregations of ACU. They had played an active role in establishing the colleges in the Sydney region and thus, there was already a well-established link between the Order and many of the staff of the university. On the other hand, such partners were in danger of being seen as foreign organisations that came from a different society and culture to those of Timor-Leste and they needed to ensure that local sensitivities and past histories were carefully considered and addressed.

Amartya Sen, and others have pointed out that there is no one path towards development (Sen, 1999; Pantoja, 2009). Different things work in different places. One of the criticisms of development aid in many countries has been that the aid has been given by the donors for their own geo-strategic motives rather than to address local needs. As a result, the aid has been wasted through local misapplication or has

INTRODUCTION

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led to an unhealthy dependence on the donor nation. Instead, the basic approach of development must always be the removal of substantial barriers that restrict and limit human freedom. The links between the components of freedom are empirical and causal. For example, social opportunities created by better education and/or health care, which often require public or corporate action, complement individual opportunities for economic and political participation. These opportunities can also foster individual initiatives by participants who may overcome their previous deprivations (Sen, 1999, p. 11). The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005) was sponsored by the OECD’s Development Co-operation Directorate and was signed by many countries and aid agencies, including Australia, in order to make progress towards such enhanced aid effectiveness. The guidelines of the Declaration include encouragement of:

• Ownership. Developing countries to set their own strategies for poverty reduction, strengthen their own institutions and reduce corruption;

• Alignment. Donor countries/agencies to align their objectives behind those set by their developing partners and deliver assistance through local systems;

• Results. Developing countries and donors to shift focus to development results and measure them;

• Mutual accountability. Donors and partners to be accountable for development results.

Another agreement is the Accra Agenda for Action (2008), which complemented the Paris Declaration and was drawn up to make aid and development more effective. The Agenda included:

• Predictability . Donors to provide a three- to five-year plan to their partner countries so that arrangements for allocation of personnel and other resources can be achieved in a timely manner;

• In-country systems to be used as a first option for aid delivery rather than donors’ systems;

• Conditionality . Donors to eschew prescriptive conditions about when and how aid is spent and adjust the ‘when’ and ‘how’ to suit developing countries’ own development objectives.

The partnership outlined in this book reflects these international agreements and Catholic social teaching principles in the implementation and operation of the project. The study records and evaluates the history and transforming nature of the partnership until 2012 when it ended in its previous form but still continues in an evolving role. The distinctive feature and flavour of the partnership is that it is embedded in the traditions and practices of the principles of Catholic social teaching. These principles, as outlined in Principles of Engagement on International Development Through the Lens of Catholic Social Teaching (Davies, MacLaren, Needham, & Steel, 2010), are inherent in the formation and application of the partnership. They have been developed over centuries, are practice-based, and

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include upholding the dignity of the human person, promoting the common good, providing a preferential option for the poor, ensuring that all people have a minimum level of participation, and advancing economic justice.

It must however be acknowledged that the involvement of faith-based groups in such projects are sometimes opposed by development agencies and their governments. They assert that while faith-based organisations provide motives such as love, charity, compassion, and a sense of justice to participate in development, religion should not interfere with the content of development; that is, “it should not influence what is effectively a secular development agenda, with its own understandings of what constitutes rationality, progress, social justice, and modern economic development. In other words, faith-based organisations should be little more than Oxfam with hymns” (Thomas, 2004, p. 135). This problem certainly arose in Timor-Leste after 1999 yet, research carried out by the World Bank in 2000 showed that religious leaders and religious institutions were often the most trusted in developing countries (Nayaran, 2000). Some development scholars insist that it must be recognised that faith is essential to communities in developing countries – that religion, with its beliefs, rituals, practices and institutions, is a powerful source of identity in the lives of people in these communities (Thomas, 2004; Myers, Whaites, & Wilkinson, 2000; Deneulin, & Bano, 2009).

The next chapter covers a brief history of Timor-Leste followed by a chapter dealing with educational trends since the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16 th century. Two chapters then examine the history and scope of the partnership. This is followed by a discussion of the different roles of the various partners and then an evaluation the effectiveness of the project. The final chapter discusses the key learnings that might prove useful in future partnerships operating in developing countries

PART I

UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGE

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CHAPTER 2

TIMOR-LESTE: AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

The island of Timor lies about 600 kilometres northwest of the Australian coast and has long been inhabited by peoples related to those in the western islands of Indonesia. About 2500 years ago, Malay peoples began settling in the main eastern Indonesian islands of Java, Borneo and Sumatra. After 1293, a powerful Javanese empire emerged in the form of the Majapahit kingdom that extended its influence over many of the western islands of the Indonesian archipelago and included Timor as one of its vassal states. What form this vassalage took remains unclear. The most likely system was through trade with the Timorese exporting sandalwood and some slaves while accepting nominal control over their fairly isolated society. The island largely remained divided into a series of local kingdoms that in turn, delegated power to smaller distinct groups. The Liurai , or traditional rulers of each kingdom, headed a hierarchical society with the Dato or lesser leaders controlling a smaller population base in what was a series of complex relationships. The Timorese maintained an essentially subsistence economy growing maize and rice as the principal crops and most of the population preferred to live in the cooler, fertile mountain valleys away from the malarial coastal plains. Climatically, the island experiences a marked wet and dry season, and even to the present day the last few weeks of the dry season lead to hungry times among much of the population. None of the great religions of the region, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, appears to have exerted any real influence upon the islanders who basically followed animist beliefs. By the early sixteenth century, the Majapahit kingdom was in decline accelerated by the arrival of the Portuguese (Taudevin, 1999, pp. 13-14).

A PORTUGUESE COLONY

The Portuguese established outposts in the Indonesian archipelago to control the spice trade and by the mid-1500s had set up bases on the islands of Solor and Flores and established contact with Timor for trading purposes through a mestizo class of people known as ‘Topasse’ (usually the offspring of Portuguese traders and local women). The Topasse began to settle in Timor itself during the early seventeenth century and soon became directly involved in the trade and politics of the island. In 1642, the Portuguese moved into Timor, defeating the local chiefs and establishing a Topasse base at what is now Oecusse. This victory, however, was soon to be challenged by the Dutch who had begun to move into the same region seeking to displace Portuguese control over the spice trade. In 1653, the Dutch landed on the western end of Timor but were defeated by the Topasse and left the island. The Dutch

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returned in 1746 and the Topasse were forced to appeal for Portuguese assistance. At the battle of Penfui in 1749, the Dutch defeated the Topasse/Portuguese forces and after this time, Timor was effectively divided into two, with the Dutch controlling most of the western half and the Portuguese the east plus a small enclave around Oecusse. Strictly speaking, this division was only finally confirmed in a treaty signed as late as 1915 but after 1750 the East Timorese settled into more than two hundred years of Portuguese colonisation (Taylor, 1999, pp. 3-5).

While Catholicism played an important role in influencing the initial Portuguese quest for empire, Timor proved to be of only marginal interest to Lisbon. For a long period, Portuguese control over traditional Timorese society was minimal except for the conversion of some of the population to Catholicism. As long as they could exercise external authority and impose some religious and cultural values upon the society in a general way, the Portuguese left traditional concepts of kinship and obligation largely unchanged. By the early twentieth century, Portugal was in decline as a great power and attempted to reinvigorate itself by making its colonies more productive from its point of view. Amidst considerable opposition from the local population, the Portuguese began to develop new infrastructure by using forced labour and to introduce more commercial farming. The old kingdoms were also abolished and new administrative units were established as Portuguese control over the interior became more formalised (McGregor, Skeaff, & Bevan, 2012, p. 1131).

Although Catholic missionaries had been in East Timor for hundreds of years, it was only in 1930 that the Church was given representation on local legislative councils. In 1940 the Concordat and Missionary Agreement was signed between the Portuguese government and the Vatican whereby the Catholic Church was to operate freely within the colony pursuing a ‘civilising influence’ over the people. It now became a legal requirement that Timorese could only obtain Portuguese citizenship if they converted to Catholicism. Between 1932 and 1968, educated Timorese from Jesuit and Dominican schools, known as letrados , became the Portuguese-speaking elite in East Timor and were expected to assist in administration of the colonial system (Millo & Barnett, 2004, p. 725). However, as the next chapter points out, these educational efforts were extremely limited. Despite the advantages enjoyed by the Catholic Church after this time, as late as 1974 a large majority of East Timorese remained Animist by religion (McGregor et al., 2012, p. 1133).

These developing Portuguese policies were undermined to some degree when on 17 December 1941, 400 Australian and Dutch commandoes arrived uninvited in an attempt to head off any use of the island as a base by the Japanese in the Pacific War. The commandoes were too small in number to hold back the large Japanese invasion force that seized the capital, Dili, and in February 1942 the Japanese overran most of the island. Many of the troops escaped to the mountains and were able to maintain resistance to the Japanese with the support of locals until they were evacuated to Australia in early 1943. One of these men was Paddy Kenneally, a former wharf labourer, who was to become a long-term supporter of the Timorese cause. Between 1942 and 1945 over 60000 Timorese lost their lives assisting these troops or in

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resisting the Japanese occupation. At the end of the war the Portuguese returned to once again administer a devastated economy and a ruined infrastructure. Having joined the United Nations in 1955, the Portuguese government committed itself, in theory, to the eventual process of decolonisation of its old empire. However, it refused to set a timetable for such changes and did little to prepare its colonies for them. Instead, the Portuguese found themselves involved in expensive wars against local independence movements in their African colonies of Angola and Mozambique. This involvement absorbed much of their resources and interests and East Timor was regarded as something of a backwater (Taylor, 1999, pp. 12-19).

Meanwhile other developments in the South East Asian region would have their subsequent impact upon Timor. In the late 1940s, the Dutch East Indies was transformed into the new nation of Indonesia with the support and sponsorship of nearby Australia. From then on, the emergence of such a large and potentially useful trading partner on its doorstep was to figure strongly in Australian foreign policy. On the other hand, having supported the Portuguese return to East Timor in 1945, Australia subsequently paid little attention to the island. Indonesia, under President Sukarno, was an ethnically diverse and often economically mismanaged nation. Sukarno partly consolidated his power within the system and strengthened the central government’s control over outlying islands by formenting nationalist claims. He pushed for the occupation of the western half of New Guinea (Irian Jaya) from the Dutch and then opposed the formation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963 by a campaign of konfrontasi (confrontation). Interestingly, Sukarno never made any claims upon East Timor during this time, and his public statements suggested no Indonesian interest in this colonial enclave. There is some evidence that privately, the government expected that, in the long run, East Timor might be incorporated into Indonesia but it was not an immediate priority. In 1965, the army, led by General Suharto, came to power in a chaotic period in which it destroyed the powerful Indonesian Communist party and killed over 500000 people. Australia welcomed the change of government, as the new regime was firmly anti-communist and friendly to the West. Alarmed by the presence of communist influences in South East Asia and wanting a stable pro-western Indonesia along with access through Indonesian deep ocean channels for its nuclear submarines, the United States was also very sympathetic to this new regime.

In 1974, young army officers staged a military coup in Portugal, ending fifty odd years of right wing dictatorship and committing the nation to democracy and decolonisation. Angola and Mozambique were quickly granted their independence but events in East Timor moved more slowly. Since the 1960s, part of the East Timorese educated elite had met clandestinely to consider issues such as independence and these ideas found some voice in a Catholic newspaper, but the police quickly closed it down. In May 1974 the governor of the province now allowed the creation of political associations (not parties) and three main groups quickly emerged. The First was the Democratic Union of Timor (UDT). It wanted autonomy for the province while still maintaining links with Portugal. It had support from many in the

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administrative elite, the plantation growers and the liurai, although internal divisions would soon appear within these groups. The second association was Apodeti that wanted integration with Indonesia but gained little popular support. Its base was the small Muslim community in Dili and some areas to the south west of the capital. The third group was the Association for a Democratic East Timor (ASDT), which in September 1974 changed its name to Fretilin ( Frente Revolucionario de Timor Leste Independente ). Adopting a mixture of socialism and democracy, it aimed at gradual independence from Portugal (in about eight years) accompanied by a range of reforms to East Timorese society. Its original members also largely came from the administrative elite with a base in Dili but maintained ties with the rural areas by advocating agricultural, literacy and health reforms. The leading figures in association at the time included Nicolau Lobato, Xavier do Amaral, Jose Ramos-Horta, Alarico Fernandes and Justino Mota. Ramos-Horta visited Indonesia in June 1974 and was assured by its foreign minister that his country would support East Timorese independence. Behind the scenes, however, the Indonesian government, especially the military, took a different view of future developments.

In September 1974, the Australian government, now led by Gough Whitlam, indicated in a meeting with General Suharto that it considered East Timorese independence not viable and that the colony should be integrated into Indonesia but in accordance with the wishes of its people. What remained unclear in such a policy was what would happen if integration with Indonesia was not the wish of the East Timorese people. Nevertheless, this policy had essentially been the stance of all Australian governments since the early 1960s. The discovery of rich oil and gas deposits in the seabed off the southern East Timorese coast only added to Australia’s interest in supporting Indonesia, as it was felt that it would be harder to negotiate a better deal for sharing these riches with either Portugal or an independent East Timor. In any event, the Indonesian government received clear signals from its neighbour that the integration of East Timor would be the logical and most acceptable course for the future. From this point onwards, the Indonesian government became more vocal and pro-active in seeking East Timorese integration (Taudevin, 1999, pp. 23-31).

In contrast, the Portuguese government was divided over what was the best policy to pursue and tended to vacillate over East Timor’s future. Eventually, in July 1975, it set elections to be held in October 1976 for a General Assembly that would determine this question, while declaring that it would end direct colonial rule by October 1978. Well before that date, internal events in East Timor would see a rapid change in the political situation. In early 1975, the UDT and Fretilin entered into a temporary alliance in the face of a possible Indonesian takeover of the colony, but over time relations between the two parties began to deteriorate. The UDT, when it was formed, was the more popular of the two, but Fretilin, with its stance over independence and its increasing rural welfare programmes, overtook it as the stronger party. In July 1975, the Portuguese allowed local council elections, and Fretilin won around 55 per cent of the popular vote.

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The UDT leadership was increasingly susceptible to Indonesian propaganda that Fretilin, which had a Marxist faction within it, was really a communist organisation that would soon stage a coup and take over the country. The Indonesians played upon these fears and the fact that they would then have to intervene to prevent Timor going the way of Vietnam and Cambodia, which had recently fallen to communist forces. Spooked by these reports and by the obviously growing power of Fretilin, the UDT decided to forestall such a possibility by staging its own coup. On the evening of 10 August 1975, forces loyal to UDT leader Lopes da Cruz took over Dili’s police headquarters and harbour and seized the radio stations and airports in Dili and Baucau in a bloodless coup. They then appealed for international support to counter any moves by Portugal to hand over East Timor to Fretilin. Ten days later, Fretilin staged a counter-coup resulting in three weeks of bitter fighting during which at least three thousand people were killed and the Portuguese governor fled to nearby Atauro Island. Fretilin seized control of East Timor, and the remnants of the UDT fled across the border to West Timor to seek Indonesian assistance. Since the Portuguese administration had effectively left the country, Fretilin formed a new government, although it also asked the Portuguese to return at least for the immediate future.

INDONESIAN CONTROL

Stunned by the success of Fretilin, the Indonesian response by October was to send ‘volunteers’ from West Timor to seize control of the border towns of Batugede, Balibo and Maliana. This move, it was hoped, would provide an easy road into the rest of Timor but Fretilin forces were quickly able to stymie such advances. It was in Balibo that five journalists (two Australians, two British and a New Zealander) were killed, which was covered up by Indonesian military. The border strategy obviously did not achieve its aims and the Indonesian government was faced with the fact that Fretilin, in an attempt to secure international support, had unilaterally declared the independence of East Timor on 28 November 1975. The Suharto regime now contemplated a full-scale invasion. On 5 December, US President, Gerald Ford, and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, visited Jakarta and informed President Suharto that American military aid to Indonesia would not be affected by any possible action towards East Timor. The Indonesian invasion subsequently commenced with an air and seaborne assault on Dili on 7 December while other troops crossed the land borders. Troops quickly secured control of all of the major towns in the country as the government and much of the population fled into the mountains. Within two weeks of the invasion, the Indonesians had set up a provisional government mainly composed of UDT and Apodeti members. Although the international community, including Australia and the United States, expressed concerns over the invasion, nothing was done, individually or collectively, against Indonesia for its behaviour. The United Nations between 1975 and 1983 regularly called upon the Indonesian government to withdraw its troops without delay, but aside from compiling annual

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reports, did little else. In May 1976, a puppet twenty-eight member ‘People’s Assembly’ signed a petition supporting integration of their country with Indonesia. On 17 July, President Suharto signed a Bill of Integration, formally making East Timor a province of Indonesia (Taylor, 1999, pp. 62-65).

Although the Indonesian armed forces found it relatively easy to gain control of the main towns of East Timor, control over the countryside was another matter. For the first three years of the war, at least two thirds of the population actually lived outside of Indonesian control and its authority frequently did not extend much beyond the boundaries of most urban areas. The lack of roads and the rugged terrain made it difficult for a conventional army to operate successfully in most places and many army units became so demoralised by the war that they had to be continually replaced, often by less experienced troops. However, over time, the Indonesians were able to use new military equipment and more troops to destroy food supplies and relocate the population away from the mountain areas. Mobile patrols and regular searches of designated zones made it increasingly hard for Fretilin to sustain its military operations. By the early 1980s, its forces had been greatly reduced and could only operate in small bands in three separate areas of the country – the central, border and eastern regions. In 1981, Xanama Gusmao was elected President of the committee and leader of Fretilin forces. He maintained a long guerrilla struggle despite many attempts to capture him. Even at the end of the 1980s, fifteen years after the Indonesian invasion, there were still around 1200 or so Fretilin guerrillas operating in small bands and engaging in hit and run operations against Indonesian troops. Fretilin also maintained considerable support amongst the local population, even in resettled areas amidst the presence of the military, police and police spies. The village structures, although badly disrupted by the Indonesian upheaval, still remained strong enough to foster and sustain opposition to Indonesian rule (Leach, 2012, pp. 255-263).

The Catholic Church underwent a transformation in this new environment. The Indonesian government tended outwardly to treat the Church with respect and even gave some funding for Christian monuments and cathedrals. As well, under Indonesia’s national development policy, all of its people were required to believe in one God and to identify with one of a number of recognised world religions. As a result, by 1994 some 90% of the population had converted to Catholicism partly as a form of protest against Indonesian rule. With the loss of Portuguese clergy after 1974, the native born priests now took on a greater role within country and were identified with the people. The Vatican allowed services to be conducted in Tetum (the main local language and lingua franca ) rather than Bahasa Indonesia and this strengthened solidarity within the local population. The Church also provided institutional support through schools and medical services that were an alternative to the Indonesian system. Jakarta put pressure upon the Vatican, largely without success, to modify this obvious local religious opposition and bring the local churches under firmer control (McGregor et al., 2012, pp. 1134-36)

Indonesian rule in East Timor used a ‘carrot and stick’ approach. The military remained an ever-threatening presence with at least 20000 troops stationed there

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at any given time. The population was often relocated into controlled villages and made to work on new projects and commercial crop plantations. Some estimates suggest that about 80% of the population was resettled in this way. Any resistance was brutally suppressed and there is considerable debate about how many Timorese died during the entire period of Indonesian control. The best estimate is perhaps as many as 150000 out of a pre-1975 population of over 653000. The government also encouraged new settlers from other parts of Indonesia to immigrate to East Timor. Although the total numbers were fairly small, they did take over many of the commercial farms and business activities of the province. Furthermore, the government made up for the lack of trained administrative staff by bringing in Javanese public servants to administer the province, although they usually came on fixed term contracts. On the positive side, the government certainly built new infrastructure and by 1990, its construction efforts on roads, bridges and schools was far greater than anything carried out by the Portuguese in their hundreds of years of colonisation.

THE COLLAPSE OF INDONESIAN CONTROL

By 1990, opposition to Indonesian rule continued to mount within East Timor and now Indonesia also found itself in a changing world. The erosion and collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the ending of much of the Cold War tensions saw a greater focus in both Europe and the United States upon human rights abuses around the globe. Portugal came under pressure from other members of the European Parliament to act, and the United Nations began to take a more pro-active approach on the East Timor issue. In October 1989, anxious to show itself in a better light, the Indonesian government allowed Pope John Paul II to consecrate a new cathedral in Dili and conduct an open air Mass at Tasi Tolu before 100000 people. Although the Vatican muted its criticism of human rights abuses in East Timor, the Mass ended with a demonstration demanding independence. The demonstrators were beaten by the police in front of foreign photographers and journalists who reported the event to the rest of the world. Under pressure, the Indonesians then tried a two-handed approach. In 1991, they increased military operations in a bid to crush opponents but also agreed to a visit by a Portuguese parliamentary delegation to monitor the situation. However, at the last moment the visit was cancelled because the military objected to journalists covering the visit. On 27 October, as the visit was being called off, troops surrounded a church in Dili where many pro-independence supporters were gathered and killed Sebastiao Gomes, a young student, while arresting twenty five others. On 12 November, a memorial Mass was held in the church for Gomes and then many began walking towards his grave in the Santa Cruz cemetery. This crowd soon swelled to around two thousand and independence banners were unfurled. At the cemetery, they were met by Indonesian troops who opened fire without warning, killing some 273 Timorese. A British photojournalist, Max Stahl, captured these events, smuggled his tape out of the country, and the massacre was

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soon being shown around the world. The result was a growing wave of international opposition during the next five years to Indonesian policies in East Timor

At first, despite the mounting criticism, it seemed that nothing had changed in Timor. The military hardened its policies in pursuing Fretilin and other pro-independence supporters. In 1992, Gusmao was captured, tried and sentenced to twenty years’ jail. In 1997, however, Indonesia was caught up in the Asian currency crisis. The stock exchange collapsed, investment dried up and unemployment soared. The Suharto regime, long accused of corruption was now blamed for the hard economic times as well. Eventually, in May 1998 Suharto was forced to resign the presidency, handing over power to B. J. Habibie, a chosen successor, considered safe enough to lead the transition to the post-Suharto era. The new president faced enormous financial turmoil and internal unrest and clearly needed international backing for his failing economy. Among other moves was Habibie’s decision to try to improve his international standing and to end the costly military involvement in East Timor by offering, in June 1998, to give the province autonomy within the Indonesian political system. This offer was rejected not only by Timorese independence movement but also the Indonesian military in East Timor. They now began to have doubts about the long-term commitment of Jakarta to maintaining a hold over the province and decided to take matters into their own hands. In the latter half of 1998, they began to recruit around 5000 West Timorese and even regular Indonesian army soldiers, to act as a paramilitary force and moved them into or close to the border regions of East Timor.

In late January 1999, the Indonesian government suddenly announced that it would be prepared to accept letting the people of East Timor go. Habibie had no real plan for doing so, nor had he consulted with the United Nations, Portugal or the pro-independence leaders of East Timor on such a proposal. However, a plan was rapidly developed that the people of East Timor should be allowed a referendum to decide upon their future. This proposal was finally accepted in May 1999 by Indonesia and Portugal, and the Secretary-General of the UN was authorised to conduct such a referendum. In turn, the Indonesian armed forces were to be held responsible for security before, during and after the plebiscite. In fact, since November 1998 elements within the armed forces had begun Operasi Sapu Jagad, or ‘Operation Global Clean Sweep’, which involved using the paramilitary units to conduct escalating levels of violence in order to portray East Timor as being racked by civil war and incapable of self-government. The military hoped that this operation would undermine the referendum and death squads focused on eliminating pro-independence leaders. The plan ran counter to the agreements with the UN, but in Jakarta, the main political parties campaigning for the June assembly elections were all pushing a pro-unity line and were unhappy that what they regarded as a part of Indonesia might possibly be given its independence. In that political climate, the armed forces had little real check upon their actions. The paramilitary violence worsened during the first eight months of 1999, with up to 5000-6000 people being killed and thousands again fleeing from their homes. The small United Nation electoral team (UNAMET)

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conducting voter registration and the poll were largely spared any direct violence but found it difficult to operate. There were doubts as to whether voters would turn out on polling day because of intimidation. The referendum was postponed twice because of the problems of violence. However, on 30 August 1999, over 98% of registered voters turned out to cast their ballots and it was announced on 4 September that 78% had voted for independence rather than for the alternative of remaining an autonomous province of Indonesia (Taudevin, 1999, p. 275).

A NEW NATION EMERGES

Stunned by the vote, the Indonesian military then stood by as paramilitary units destroyed buildings in Dili and drove hundreds of thousands of people either into the mountains or into refugee camps in West Timor. Dili itself became a ghost town and over 80% of the East Timor’s infrastructure was destroyed, including almost all of its electrical grid. The United Nations now came under pressure to intervene and by 13 September, faced with the possibility of international financial and trade embargoes, Habibie announced that he would accept the entry of a UN peacekeeping force into East Timor. After years of criticism of its policies by Paddy Kenneally and other supporters of the East Timorese, the Australian government finally reversed its long-standing policies in January and agreed to head a force of some 8000 peacekeepers and the first troops landed in Dili on 20 September. The Indonesian Army officially handed over security responsibilities for East Timor to this force on 27 September and it began the immense task of restoring law and order and dealing with paramilitary units still operating along the border regions with West Timor. Once the military situation began to improve, the UN could move civilian administrators into the country to re-establish the structures of government and prepare the nation for independence.

The new administration formed the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET). Although the United Nations certainly went through the outward process of consultation, there is some merit in the argument that its administrators basically arrived with preconceived views for creating a new nation – what are sometimes referred to as the ‘one-eyed giant’ approaches that ignore much of what is needed beyond simple material issues. UNTAET quickly marginalised and ignored the Catholic Church, for example, regarding it as irrelevant to the task of nation building even though it was one of the few remaining institutions with much of its network of structures still intact (McGregor et al., 2012, p. 1137). It also had little real understanding of Timorese society and quickly came to rely upon some key individuals for guidance on these matters.

Various groups that had either hidden in the mountains, been forced into exile overseas or, as in the case of Xanama Gusmao, had been released from Indonesian prisons, began to emerge to join in the transition process. The main umbrella organisation for these groups was the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT). This organisation appointed representatives right down to the village and

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hamlet level whereas UNTAET tended to operate only down to the district level. CNRT then sent out field workers to co-ordinate with CNRT representatives at the lower levels of authority. Outwardly, CNRT, with Gusmao as its chairman/president, gave the appearance of national unity and seemed to speak with one voice for the Timorese people. It was on Gusmao’s advice and recommendation that a transitional cabinet was set up by UNTAET in July 2000. The CNRT denied the existence of any internal opposition to its policies because it was anxious to display a strong sense of cultural unity and be seen by UNTAET as speaking with authority. However, there were growing and often serious underlying differences within the organisation and across its political groupings, differences that would later become a problem for the new country.

In August 2000, for example, CNRT recommended that Portuguese be the official language of the country (followed by Tetum as the second language) even though less than 10% of the population spoke Portuguese and almost no one under the age of thirty understood it. This decision reflected the generational and educational gaps between the older Portuguese-educated leadership and the younger, Indonesian-educated leaders. The more popular Tetum had the disadvantage of being basically an oral language and required investment of considerable resources to give it a written form. Further differences were exacerbated by émigré groups heading back from exile in Australia, Portugal and its other colonies and the United States where each had built up its own ties and links. Many members of Fretilin, for example, saw the Catholic Church as a colonial hangover and did not want to work with it, while some clergy had long disapproved of Fretilin’s Marxist roots. There were also long standing regional differences, especially between east-west ( Firaku-Kaladi ) as well as the issue of the older influence of the Liurai and how their authority would be incorporated into any new democratic nation state. CNRT comprised sixteen political ‘parties’ or groups that essentially represented many of these obvious differences. Fretilin, already the largest party and experienced in organising grass roots resistance during Indonesian rule, refused to accept some of CNRT’s internal agreements and in August 2000 quit the organisation. It began establishing structures of authority from the village up that ran parallel to the CNRT authority base.

In the August 2001 vote for a Constituent Assembly, designed to draft a new constitution, Fretilin emerged as the largest party, securing 55 of the final 88 seats, and then dominated proceedings. Many members of the newer and smaller parties were only able to join a future government by essentially accepting the authority of Fretilin. The new constitution, modelled upon that of Portugal, created a unicameral legislature elected for five years with a powerful office of prime minister and cabinet over a government that was given strong central powers. The popularly elected president (also with a five-year term) possessed only the ceremonial powers of a Head of State. Once the election for the Constituent Assembly had been completed, UNTAET created a second transitional government based upon these results and Mari Alkatiri, a long time Fretilin member, became the new prime minister. The Constituent Assembly, despite some opposition from minor parties, deemed further

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legislative elections unnecessary and in late January 2002 transformed itself into the future legislature of the nation. This left only the need for the presidential election to be conducted and on 15 April 2002 Gusmao, running without any party label, secured 82% of the popular vote. Technically, the UN accepted Timor-Leste as a new state on 20 May 2002 but National Independence Day is celebrated on 28 November, as that day in 1975 was regarded as the nation’s real birthday. The UN also remained within the new nation to provide security and technical infrastructure roles through its UN Mission in East Timor (UNMISET).

Gusmao soon found that his power was restricted by the constitution and his authority therefore rested upon some backing from the army, many of whom were ex-Fretilin fighters, as well as upon his obvious personal popularity. Yet the president had little real power over his prime minister or cabinet or the actions of any them. For example, the first Minister for Internal Affairs, Rogerio Lobato not only controlled the police force but went out of his way to stack it with a high proportion of ex-guerrillas. The increasing factionalism within Fretilin meant that the eastern-region police and the western-region army, despite otherwise similar backgrounds, were soon at loggerheads. Intense rivalry between the groups over issues such as pay and prestige, and even clashes between them from as early as 2002 precipitated further civil unrest from a general population unhappy about the nation’s economic problems. There were further police-army clashes in December 2004 before even greater violence in 2006.

In April 2006, fighting broke out again between parts of the army and the police force, leading to deaths and destruction, especially in Dili. Alkatiri was accused of using hit squads to try to murder his political opponents and Gusmao insisted that either he or the prime minister should resign. This ultimatum represented the culmination of years of growing alienation between the two men. Although Alkatiri received backing from his party, continued unrest eventually led to his resignation in June. An Australian-led International Stabilization Force (ISF) arrived to restore order in late May. This was supplemented by the subsequent arrival of over 1600 international police as part of another UN mission known as UNMIT. By 2007, the situation was stable enough to hold elections for the presidency and the unicameral legislature. In a crowded field of candidates, Ramos-Horta, the former foreign minister, was forced into a second round against his Fretilin opponent but then easily secured the Presidency with nearly 70% of the popular vote. Gusmao had decided to contest a seat in the Assembly heading a revived CNRT. Fretilin had been discredited by past events and its vote was reduced to 29%. It held 21 assembly seats, making it still the largest party but well short of a majority and only just ahead of CNRT with 24% of the vote and 18 seats. The various parties then struggled to negotiate some form of government and on 6 August, Ramos-Horta announced that he would recognise Gusmao’s CNRT coalition as the government and began appointing cabinet ministers. While such a decision would have been acceptable in a more mature democratic culture, Fretilin and other opponents of the government greeted it with dismay.

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As a result, political instability and factionalism intensified and in February 2008 both the president and prime minister were the targets of assassination attempts by rogue elements led by Alfredo Reinado. He had been responsible for leading much of the violence in April-May 2006 and had then escaped from prison in August of that year and had taken to the hills as a guerrilla fighter. Gusmao escaped any harm but Ramos-Horta was severely wounded and Reinado was killed in a shoot-out with security forces. The President recuperated in hospital and stayed among friends in Darwin before resuming his post later in the year. The remaining rebels involved eventually surrendered to authorities and in March 2010 received prison sentences of up to sixteen years, but the President subsequently pardoned or commuted most of these sentences. Although peace returned to the island during 2008, the United Nations agreed to a request to extend its security presence for a further five years until 2013. The Australian and New Zealand defence forces also provided an ongoing security presence through ISF with some 390 Australian and 70 New Zealand personnel stationed in the country during 2012. However, on 21 November 2012, the ISF began the closure of its operations with all of its troops leaving by April 2013. A small and separate Australian unit remained to help train the East Timorese army (Doherty & Wroe, 2012).

In March 2012, Ramos-Horta ran third in the next presidential election and was eliminated from the second round of voting, which was contested between Francisco Guterres and Jose Maria Vasconcelos (whose nom de guerre is Taur Matan Ruak). In the April poll, Ruak secured 61.2% of the popular vote. The following July Gusmao’s party clearly outpolled Fretilin in the next Assembly election although it still fell short of a majority of seats and so the former coalition continued to govern. Unlike previous elections, the poll was conducted with relatively little violence and the parties also accepted the Assembly election results despite some grumbling over it from Fretilin. This was another sign of the slow but steady growth of democratic processes within the new nation, a remarkable change given the violence of the past and the ongoing economic challenges faced by the government.

PROBLEMS FOR THE NATION

Since independence, the various governments of Timor-Leste have struggled to implement economic improvement in what is, by world standards, a small and poor nation. The per capita income in 2002 was around US$500. Over 40% of the population were living below the poverty line, over 50% were illiterate and one in ten children died before the age of five. Life expectancy for males was only around fifty-five years. To add to the nation’s problems, there was also a reduction in crop yields due to late rainfall in 2002 and then floods in 2003. The economy contracted in 2003 and only achieved small growth in 2004-5 before falling again due to violence in 2006. Since that time, it has shown growth but so have inflation and the population (reaching the one million mark by 2009) that add to economic and social pressures. The 2008 global financial crisis created yet another problem to an

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economy struggling to get onto its feet and whose best asset, large oil reserves, have proved both a blessing and possibly a curse.

During 2002, the UN administration reached agreement with Australia confirming earlier boundary treaties signed with Indonesia over valuable oil and gas fields in the Timor Sea. Further intense negotiations then followed between Australia and the new Timorese government over the Greater Sunrise energy field further south in the Timor Sea. This was a field over which there were competing jurisdictional claims by both countries. Recent evidence indicates that the Australian government spied upon and even bugged the cabinet room in Dili so that it could gain an advantage in its negotiations over the oil. Eventually, in January 2006, both nations signed a treaty to share the revenues from this field, estimated at up to AU$40 billion, equally. They also agreed that any future territorial claims on the area would be postponed for the next sixty years. These decisions have recently been challenged by the Timorese government as unfair and remain a source of tension between the two nations. Nevertheless, even by 2005, it was possible for the East Timorese government to establish a Petroleum Fund as its main source of income to be used for future development. By June 2008, it was worth over US$3.2 billion and this had risen to $10.2 billion by 2012, even though the government was also drawing nearly 90% of its billion-dollar budget from this fund. These oil and gas resources have not necessarily translated into greater employment or alleviation of poverty amongst the local population, any more than the billions in foreign aid spent over the past decade have done. (Anderson, 2012, pp. 136-139; Schofield, 2005).

Timor-Leste has a chronic shortage of basic infrastructure and remains an essentially agricultural economy (much of it subsistence farming) that comprises at least 30% of the GDP. Unlike some developing nations, it lacks labour intensive industries such as garment making and relies too much upon agriculture that is seasonal in its demands. Although officially the unemployment rate in 2014 is claimed to be around 11%, it may well be two to three times this as it is difficult to estimate in what is largely a subsistence economy. The improving high school system allows 15000 to 20000 students to graduate each year, but only 2000-3000 students then go onto higher education. The children of poorer families usually miss out on such opportunities and often then face few employment prospects. The nation’s fledgling justice system and banking sector, for example, remain too inexperienced to function without foreign assistance. In 2010, Gusmao launched the Strategic Development Plan intended to transform his nation by 2030 from the poorest state in South East Asia into an upper middle class society based upon a sustainable and non-oil economy (Shoesmith, 2012, p. 285). In 2011, the government changed the rules of its Petroleum Fund, which had previously been conservatively invested in international bonds to allow up to half the fund to be invested in equities and a further 10% to be used as collateral for loans. This change was intended to fund a state-led development by diversifying investments. Critics of the move, however, fear that inexperienced leadership within the various ministries will lead to large sums being lost and mismanaged through fraud or ill-advised equity dealings. In any

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event, Timor-Leste, a small state undergoing post-conflict traumas, remains one of the most oil-dependent nations in the world in terms of its government revenue and has little by way of an advanced economy (Bachelard, 2012).

As the historical overview has shown, Timor-Leste has had a turbulent past and for centuries its people have not been masters of their own country. Other nations have imposed themselves upon the island and set agendas to suit themselves. These have included policies concerning education, or often the lack of it that have played a major role in shaping today’s society. To that story we turn in the next chapter.

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CHAPTER 3

TIMOR-LESTE: AN EDUCATIONAL OVERVIEW

In order to understand the context of the partnership under study in this book, the evolution of the education system in Timor-Leste needs to be explored. This chapter provides an historical context for this process from the time of Portuguese colonisation to that of the Independence vote. It then considers the development of education during the transition period, following Independence, during which time ICFP was established in Baucau, and then the subsequent broader educational context within which this new institution found itself within Timorese society.

Two distinctive periods shaped the education system in East Timor before its vote for independence in 1999. As the United Nations Development Programme reported in 2002, “East Timor’s education system today is the legacy of colonial rule, but by two colonial powers that had very different priorities” (UNDP, 2002, p. 47). The Portuguese colonial period demonstrated little interest in mass education for the East Timorese, but the small percentage of the population who were educated received high quality education and became leaders in the subsequent period. The Indonesians, who ruled after the Portuguese, encouraged universal primary education, but their agenda served more to indoctrinate the young into Indonesian society than develop an independent education system.

EDUCATION DURING PORTUGUESE COLONISATION

Under Portuguese colonial rule, the education system in East Timor remained restricted and exclusive to an elite over a long period of time. Even by 1909, the Portuguese had only established seventeen public schools with 1035 students (Carey, 1999, p. 78). Student numbers only increased to 2979 students by 1937 and it was not until 1952 that the first public secondary school was finally opened (Nicolai, 2004, p. 42). Subsequently, throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, there was substantial investment in the education sector with a fivefold increase in the number of students enrolled in primary schools and a doubling in the number of secondary students. By 1972, when there were some 60000 students in primary schools, the total population of East Timor was approximately 600000 (Pedersen & Arneberg, 1999, p. 85). Nevertheless despite this dramatic increase in student numbers since 1960, less than 10% of the population were identified as literate when the Portuguese left their former colony (World Bank, 2001, p. 13).

Although the education system during the Portuguese era was not expanded until the last years of colonisation, there is agreement that the quality of education was superior to that provided by the Indonesians (Beck, 2008b, p. 40; Odling-Smee,

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1999, p. 14). There was better discipline and a wider sense of literature and culture. However, despite its high quality, this education promoted Portuguese culture and values in order to underscore East Timor’s ties to the Portuguese empire. There was little focus on local culture and geography, and the link to Portugal represented a “window to the west” for the elite (Wu, 2000, p. 3). Rote learning was the preferred method of instruction.

Nevertheless, a number of those educated under this system were sent to Portugal to complete their education. It was these students who often brought back with them ideas of liberation and freedom (Millo & Barnett, 2004, p. 726). They took up leadership roles in Timor-Leste after it won its independence and played an integral role in building their nation. Some of these people were later instrumental in forming CNRT and its Educational Division played an important part in shaping Timor-Leste’s education system in the period of transition after independence. Before the invasion by Indonesia, Fretilin was advocating greater literacy for the East Timorese. It initiated an education campaign in various communities and focused on the importance of decolonising the education system and promoting community education (Hill, 2002). Some Portuguese-educated students became primary school teachers when they had completed four years of primary education as well as a few months of teacher training that certified them to teach grades 1 and 2. In the aftermath of independence, these students often worked as teachers of Portuguese (UNDP, 2002, p. 47).

EDUCATION UNDER INDONESIAN RULE

After Indonesia invaded East Timor, it regarded education as one of the means to integrate the region into the rest of Indonesia and they quickly established a system that promoted Indonesian culture and history. However, it took a number of years to completely abolish the overall Portuguese school system and replace it with the Indonesian one (Beck, 2008a, p. 4). The new curriculum developed subjects such as history and geography from an Indonesian perspective and was often taught by Indonesian teachers. The curriculum “forced teachers to teach particular content in a directed way with the result that teachers were always teaching with the fear of losing their jobs if examination results were not good enough” (Beck, 2006, p. 146). The Portuguese language was replaced by Bahasa Indonesia, which became the main language of instruction.

The level of literacy also increased exponentially during the Indonesian occupation. The Indonesian government introduced the concept of Education for All, “which was part of a UN programme to have all children gain a primary education and then a junior secondary education” (Earnest, Beck, & Supit, 2008, p. 79). Thus, universal primary education became mandatory and outwardly it became readily available as the number of primary students burgeoned between 1975 and 1999 (Nicolai, 2004, p. 44). Taylor (1999), however, identified this “progress” in education as a myth

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propagated by the Indonesians to project to the international community the benefits of their control over East Timor. He argued that:

• A publication by the Indonesian military in 1984 entitled “ East Timor Develops ” claimed that 400 primary schools had been built in the previous nine years, containing 98850 students and 2446 teachers. No comparisons are given between the Indonesian and Portuguese periods because “the comparison is, of course, unfavourable”. There were 463 primary schools in East Timor in 1973 (p. 128).

• Most of the teachers were imported from Indonesia and the Portuguese and Tetum languages were banned.

• The priorities of the education system were skewed. For example, out of a total of 274971 textbooks for use in primary schools, “no less than 200670 were devoted to Bahasa Indonesia. Only 9292 dealt with the sciences” (p. 129).

This assessment by Taylor was supported by findings in the 2002 United Nations Development Report. It conceded that by 1985 almost every village had a primary school but it also identified major flaws in the system. One was the low quality of education. There was a poor standard of teaching and schools lacked funds as well as resources as is to be expected in education systems in post-conflict societies (O’Donoghue & Clarke, 2013, p. 15). Most of the East Timorese who became teachers had not progressed beyond fourth grade education. Their pay was meagre and they often had to seek extra employment. They were, therefore, frequently absent from school. This discouraged some parents who struggled to enrol their children because of the costs of fees and uniforms. As a result, approximately 30% of children were not enrolled in primary schools and this had an effect on enrolment at secondary school. By 1999, net enrolment “had still only reached 36% at the lower secondary level and 20% at the upper secondary level” (UNDP, 2002, p. 5). Another major problem was that education was perceived as being used to “Indonesianise” the East Timorese people (UNDP, 2002, p. 5; Nicolai, 2004, p. 44). Some parents had reservations about educating their children in a system that represented repression and often was taught by foreign teachers. Millo & Barnett (2004) indicate that; “education was seen as forced cooperation with the Indonesian occupation” (p. 727). This resulted in minimal community involvement and there was little ownership of education services (Millo & Barnett, 2004). This alienation was a significant problem in a small state where community links and interpersonal ties were so important.

The consequence of the low rate of enrolment, combined with a high rate of dropout, was that by 1995 less than half of all males and females aged between fifteen and nineteen had completed primary school (UNDP, 2002, p. 14). This meant that half the population was illiterate in the years after Independence although that rate was a major improvement on the Portuguese period. Also during Indonesian rule, the education system increased the skills of many East Timorese that allowed them to obtain employment in Indonesia (they were discouraged from being employed in East Timor) in factories or low-level government administration that had not been available to them under the Portuguese.

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The tertiary sector was less developed than the school system but some gains were made under the Indonesians. In 1986, a private university was established in Dili with three faculties: social politics, teacher training, and agriculture. Other tertiary institutions that were founded included a Health Academy to train nurses and Dili Polytechnic College with two-year courses in engineering and accountancy. In 1998, the Dili School of Economics was established, offering courses in accountancy and management (Pederson & Arneberg, 1999, p. 87). Despite the increase in the number of tertiary institutions in the late 1980s and 1990s, the level of tertiary education remained low. Tertiary enrolment remained at 3.8% in 1999 (UNDP, 2002, p. 48). The University, the most prestigious tertiary institution in the country, suffered from few resources and out-dated teaching methods. The frequent absence of staff and students compounded the problem.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND EDUCATION

Although literacy levels had been very low throughout the Portuguese colonial era, the Catholic Church had provided a considerable part of the education that was available. Some of the religious orders, such as the Canossians, Dominicans, Jesuits, and Salesians, had long been established in Timor. In 1738, the Dominicans built the first seminary in Lifau, and by 1863 the first college was established in Dili (Millo & Barnett, 2004, p. 725). In 1878, the first Canossian Sisters arrived in East Timor and focused on the promotion of women and non-formal education (Field, 2008, p. 8). Subsequently, other educational institutions were established in major towns by Catholic orders. However, the Church’s achievements in either education or religion remained limited. By 1937, only around 5% of the population was registered Christians and the vast majority of East Timorese were illiterate and animist. Between 1932 and 1968, those educated Timorese of the Jesuit and Dominican schools, known as letrados , became the Portuguese-speaking elite (Millo & Barnett, 2004, p. 725). Contrastingly, while the letrados received official education, the rural Timorese received rudimentary education. The teaching style was characterised by rote learning and a respect for the authority of the clergy as representatives of God was instilled in the students. Only Portuguese was permitted at the rural Catholic schools. However, Tetum became the lingua franca through its use by the Catholic Church in sermons, catechetical texts and dictionaries. It was also widely used by Church officials and leaders (Millo & Barnett, 2004, pp. 725-726) and was to play a critical role during the Indonesian occupation.

By 1974, only about 20-30% of the population of East Timor were Catholic (Kohen, 2000, p. 20). Despite this, most of the leaders of the parties that emerged in the aftermath of Portuguese colonisation were educated at the Jesuit seminary in Dare. Indeed, during the colonial era, members of the Catholic clergy were more closely linked to the Timorese people than members of any other institution under Portuguese rule. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, for example, normal censorship laws did not apply to Seara , a Jesuit-run weekly. Its columns addressed important

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issues such as traditional marriage laws, housing problems, and the principles of education. It dedicated frequent space to the teaching of Tetum, “thus implicitly criticising the state education system which insisted on the sole use of Portuguese” (Carey, 1999, p. 80). The leaders who took over in 1975 were home grown and shared the experience of the strict discipline of the Jesuit priests. They were educated at the Catholic school in Soibada (Field, 2008, p. 11) and then attended Dare, which was perched above Dili like an “eagle’s nest” (Cristalis, 2002, p. 32). It was here that the young scholar who became Bishop Belo and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, and the “recalcitrant teenage rebel”, Xanana Gusmao, were taught Latin, Portuguese and philosophy by the Jesuit fathers (Cristalis, 2002, p. 32). The seminary at Dare was the only higher education institution in East Timor at the time and it educated the male children of the local elite. The seminary was still educating a small group of students in the 1990s under Indonesian rule.

As noted in the previous chapter, during the Indonesian occupation, all Timorese were required to profess one of the recognised faiths of the state: Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Buddhism or Hinduism. They adopted Catholicism en masse because of the Church’s long history on the island and its solidarity with the people during the occupation. The number of Catholics rose from 20% to 30% in 1973 to more than 81% in 1989 and 90% by 1994 (Millo & Barnett, 2004, p. 727; Taylor-Leech, 2009, p. 42). Part of this solidarity was reinforced by the Church’s maintaining its education system through a network of colégios . The colégios were centres containing a parish church, a convent, a boarding school, and a plot of agricultural land (Carey, 1999, p. 84). The network of colégios cared for the wives, widows, children and orphans of resistance fighters. It played a role in maintaining some knowledge of Portuguese language and customs and offered the younger Timorese generation, who were denied access to such knowledge in Indonesian schools, a “unique cultural space” (Carey, 1999, p. 84).

Despite retaining their independence under Indonesian rule, Catholic schools received no financial assistance from the Indonesian government. They survived through small donations by external Catholic development agencies, which were channelled through social organisations based in Indonesia (Taylor, 1999, p. 128). These difficulties were accentuated by the disparate treatment of East Timorese teachers who worked in Indonesian schools and those who taught at Catholic schools. The wages of teachers who worked in Indonesian-run schools were approximately triple that of their Catholic counterparts (Taylor, 1999, p. 128). Catholic schools continued to use Tetum as the language of instruction during the Indonesian occupation. According to Carey, this was one of the ways that the Church contributed to, and sustained, East Timorese nationalism. Carey cites the “pivotal” decision taken by the Catholic hierarchy in 1981 to adopt Tetum, rather than Bahasa Indonesia, as the local lingua franca for Church services and liturgy when the Indonesian authorities banned Portuguese. The decision was endorsed by the Vatican and “raised Tetum from being a mere local language in parts of East

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Timor to becoming … the language of ‘East Timorese’ religion and identity” (Carey, 1999, p. 85).

THE REFERENDUM AND ITS AFTERMATH

As already outlined in the previous chapter, in 1999, East Timorese voters rejected the offer of autonomy within Indonesia and chose independence. The result unleashed an explosion of violence by Indonesian troops and pro-Indonesian militias. Sources differ on the exact percentage of infrastructure that was damaged or destroyed, but there is agreement that it was substantial. The new nation was very much in the position of being a post-conflict state where much of its infrastructure had been damaged by warfare. In relation to the education sector, most sources concur that over 85% of school buildings were destroyed (Steele, 2002, p. 77). Some sources elevate the percentage to 90% (Dodd, 2000; UNICEF, 2001; UNESCO, 2003) and others claim that “95% of schools and other education institutions were destroyed” (Earnest et al., 2008, p. 80; Hill, 2005, p. 103; Nicolai, 2004, p. 30; Beck & Araujo, 2013, p. 165). When the pro-Indonesian militias began their rampage, they ensured that maximum damage was inflicted by filling the classrooms of Dili’s secondary schools with drums of fuel and torching them. This left Timor-Leste without an effective secondary education system, because most of the 140 secondary schools had been destroyed (Dodd, 2000).

The destruction of schools and other educational infrastructure was complemented by the mass exodus and displacement of teachers in Timor-Leste. Approximately 80% of secondary school and 20% of primary school teachers were from Indonesia. In addition, most of the staff in the Department of Education as well as the training institutes were Indonesian. These all left Timor-Leste during the violence and did not return (Dodd, 2000; UNDP, 2002, pp. 14-15; UNESCO, 2003). Although the majority of primary school teachers were Timorese, most were displaced, for various reasons, in the weeks following the referendum. At that time, the vast majority of teachers under Indonesian rule had been males, but from 1999 onwards, women began to step into the void created by the loss of so many teachers.

In the immediate aftermath of the ballot, the Church stood by the Timorese population, but it paid a great price for its stance. The militias targeted the clergy and religious. In the town of Suai, for example, three priests were killed in early September (Kohen, 2000, p. 20). Nine church workers, including two nuns and three seminarians, were murdered near the town of Laga (Kohen, 2000, p. 20). Despite this, the Catholic Church remained committed to the development of education in Timor-Leste. The first schools to be re-established after the violence were Catholic ones. These schools were popular “because they started with a clear programme and good staffing compared to state schools” (Field, 2008, p. 16).

After the destruction, Timor-Leste began the arduous and slow process of rebuilding its education system anew. Establishing the right education system was crucial to its future as a young nation. Research by the United Nations’ Committee

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on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and others, has identified a number of attributes, which will here be referred to as the “5 As”, in relation to States ensuring the right to education:

• Availability: functioning educational institutions and programmes need to be available in sufficient quantity;

• Accessibility: educational institutions and programmes must be accessible to everyone physically, geographically and via modern technology;

• Affordability: primary, secondary, and higher education must be affordable to all without discrimination;

• Acceptability: the form and substance of education have to be relevant, culturally appropriate and of good quality;

• Adaptability: education must be flexible and responsive to culture and needs as they exist and change (UN Economic and Social Council, 1999; Butcher, Benjamin, Sidoti, Steel, & Casey, 2011, pp. 170-171).

When these attributes are taken into account, a better education system could be created that would enhance Timor-Leste’s capacity to innovate and improve social capital and development. However, Timor-Leste faced a number of major challenges in rebuilding its education system that was typical of a small state in a post-conflict situation. These included the need to establish new schools following the widespread destruction, train new teachers as well as upgrade qualifications of those who had remained, develop new and appropriate curriculum, and deal with the language conundrum. All this needed to be achieved against a backdrop of the limited resources available in the new nation.

RECONSTRUCTION: DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW EDUCATION SYSTEM

Even before the referendum was held, a conference on Strategic Development Planning for an Independent East Timor was held in April 1999 in Melbourne by CNRT. During the conference, education was recognised as a central component of the strategic plan for nation building. The meeting recognised that:

Education is a key sector in the transformation of the East Timorese society and economy. The schooling system and non-formal educational opportunities must be responsible and flexible to meet the needs of other departments and projects, and promote equity and participation (Millo & Barnett, 2004, p. 730).

The plan called for nothing less than the transformation of the teaching-learning process and the overhaul of the curriculum. Some of its goals included:

• Emphasis on the quality of the teaching and learning process;• Promotion of the development and quality of the history and culture of Timor-

Leste;• Reintroduction of Portuguese from grade 1;

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• Redevelopment of a national curriculum that would include history and geography of Timor-Leste;

• Training of teachers in order to fill the vacuum left by the departure of Indonesian teachers and offer permanency of employment (Nicolai, 2004, pp. 48-49; Beck, 2008a, p. 5).

This transformative educational plan was never fully implemented because of the violence that followed the popular consultation in September 1999 but reflected the thinking of many in leadership at the time.

After the establishment of UNTAET in October 1999, a Joint Assessment Mission (JAM) was set up by the World Bank to gather accurate information on the extent of damage to schools and assess the requirements needed to re-establish the education system. One of the most pressing needs identified during the assessment period related to the availability of professionally trained teachers (Nicolai, 2004, p. 73). At the same time, the World Bank established the Trust Fund for East Timor. The Fund mobilised money and resources to set up the Emergency School Recovery Project (ESRP). ESRP’s role was, among other things, to rehabilitate damaged schools, supply textbooks and furniture for schools, and recruit teachers (Earnest et al., 2008, p. 80; Hill, 2005, p.103). During the emergency phase, from November 1999 to June 2000, CNRT also established a Department of Education, and district education officers assisted UNICEF and UNTAET in collecting data about the number of schools that were functioning and distributing school supplies (Earnest et al., 2008, p. 80).

Despite UNTAET’s and the World Bank’s vital work in the education sector during this period, they avoided curriculum reform, one of the most vital issues to the development of education in Timor-Leste. Admittedly, as is attested to by numerous sources on education in states emerging from conflict, curriculum development and reform can be one of the most challenging aspects faced by these societies (World Bank, 2005; Rose & Greeley, 2006; UNICEF, 2010). Designing curriculum reform is important because it is a mechanism for building peace, instilling core values, and promoting good citizenship. Moreover, curriculum reform contributes to state building and needs to involve various stakeholders, including local authorities and teachers (Rose & Greeley, 2006, p. 9). UNTAET’s abdication of responsibility for reforming the curriculum in Timor-Leste, therefore, meant that the Indonesian curriculum and Indonesian educational system continued to be used. Consequently, Millo & Barnett (2004) have argued that there was a missed opportunity to implement “a more profound transformation of education” that was called for by the Timorese (p. 722). The key reason for this lack of action appears to have been that UNTAET and the World Bank believed that they lacked legitimacy as radical agents of change.

After the transition period, when Timor-Leste gained full independence in 2002, UNICEF and the World Bank worked together to develop a programme to get all students back to school. By then, 240000 students were attending schools, almost 6000 teachers were recruited at all levels, and over one million textbooks had been

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distributed to schools (East Timor, 2002). Although numerous damaged schools were repaired and reopened and teachers were recruited, schools still lacked basic teaching resources (Beck, 2006, p. 147). Even if and when resources were developed, teachers needed to be trained to use the resources effectively in their teaching. As Quinn (2005) pointed out, “Since teachers have not had the luxury of using charts, workbooks, cards and other teaching aids, the challenge will be not only to provide resources, but also the knowledge of which aids actually assist teachers to teach” (p. 113).

Once the new government gained power in May 2002, it formulated a number of education policies to strengthen the education system. It formed the National Development Plan which enunciated a number of key goals. These were:

• Easier access to education for all, and the establishment of at least one primary school in each village;

• Better quality of teaching and learning;• Higher school completion and retention rates;• Development of school curricula, particularly for technical training, relevant to

the conditions and needs of Timor-Leste; and• Reintroduction of Portuguese and Tetum in schools (MECYS, 2005, p. 10).

In October 2003, the National Education Congress composed of teachers, headmasters, parents and other stakeholders, met and put forward recommendations that formed the basis of the National Education Policy. The school system was stratified into six years of primary, three years of lower secondary and three years of upper secondary education (Earnest et al., 2008, p. 85). After extensive consultation with stakeholders in 2004, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sports developed the Education Policy Framework, which outlined the vision, mission, guiding principles, and strategic priorities to be pursued in the medium term (MECYS, 2005, p. 11). The Ministry identified and adopted some key objectives and programme priorities for the period 2004-2008. These included action to:

• Establish an appropriate policy, legal and regulatory framework for the education sector;

• Promote universal quality primary education;• Hasten the effective re-introduction of Portuguese and the introduction of Tetum

in schools; and• Rationalize the provision of tertiary education (MECYS, 2005, p. 18).

The intention of these education policies was to provide directions for sustainable improvements in service delivery and quality of education.

The Education Base Law of 2008 subsequently set out the strategic plan for the development of basic education for children from the Early Childhood sector through to the Higher Education sector in Timor-Leste. It prescribed the minimum standards for the people of Timor-Leste and the way in which education was to be organised in both the public and private areas. It aimed to give:

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all citizens the right and the equality of opportunities regarding education and professional training, access to the higher levels of education, scientific investigation and artistic creation, in addition to the right to cultural creation and enjoyment, as well as the right to preserve, defend and valorise cultural legacy (p. 1).

With sweeping reforms to the 2005 Education Base Law, which was discarded following the election of a new government, there have been huge changes in the way in which education is being provided in Timor-Leste. Some of the changes relate to organisation of schools, teacher training and professional development, accreditation for the Higher Education sector, the establishment of an inspectorate for primary, pre-secondary and secondary schools, and the decentralisation of the Ministry of Education into four regions.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

As previously noted, it was the Catholic Church, without due acknowledgement or support by the UN and the transitional government, which had first reopened schools during the emergency period and began to organise classes (Earnest et al., 2008, p. 81). By 2005, the Church operated one in eight primary schools across the country. Furthermore, Catholic schools comprised about a quarter of junior secondary schools and a third of senior secondary schools (MECYS, 2005, p. 4). After 2002, religious orders also multiplied in Timor-Leste. By 2008, there were thirty female and nine male religious congregations working there (Field, 2008, p.8). For congregations that focused on education, the emphasis was on education for employment, with a thrust for vocational education. The heavy involvement of Church organisations is consistent with international development studies (Thomas, 2004; Nolan, 2005; Deneulin & Bano, 2009) that indicate faith-based organisations contribute significantly to the development of post-conflict states.

The work of the religious orders in education was instrumental in training young people for employment. For example, the Jesuits operated the San José school in Balide, and the Canossian sisters managed eleven colleges, including nine boarding houses for students. In addition, the Salesian Missions led the way in community-driven educational planning. Their focus was upon mobilising grassroots participation in educational planning rather than waiting for the state to bring about the change (Pillay & Elliott, 2005, p. 91). Furthermore, the Canossians and Salesians focused on vocational training for young people. The Canossian sisters supported young women in traditional handicrafts and hospitality training through vocational training centres (Field, 2008, p. 17). Through the Mary MacKillop East Timor Mission, the Sisters of St Joseph are among the very few groups that produced literacy material in Tetum. The congregation, working in Timor-Leste since 1994, produces books and quality resources for primary schools (Taylor-Leech, 2009, pp. 21-22).

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A report by Annette Field for Caritas Australia indicated that the Parliamentary Majority Alliance in Timor-Leste, which came to power in August 2007, “made it clear that there is a role for the churches as partners with government in developing the country” (Field, 2008, p. 6). However, there has sometimes been tension between the Church and the State since independence, as the Church tries to redefine its role and purpose in an independent Timor-Leste and the government, in turn, has sought to increase its role in education. An example of this occurred in March 2005 when the Church organised a demonstration to protest against the government’s proposal to omit Religious Education from the curriculum of state primary schools and make it optional rather than compulsory. The demonstrations lasted for four weeks and exacerbated Church-government relations (Field, 2008, p. 36).

PRIMARY EDUCATION

A large number of primary school teachers that still remained in Timor-Leste after the violence worked as volunteers, at times receiving small payments from UNICEF and at other times some food from the World Food Programme. Most of the existing primary school teachers had only completed lower-secondary education and continued to upper-secondary schools during the Indonesian occupation (UNDP, 2002, p. 52). Furthermore, during the transition phase, teachers were still relying on the traditional method of rote learning to teach children rather than encouraging more active learning (UNDP, 2002, p. 5). Clearly, more teachers and better teacher training were needed because, as O’Donoghue and Clarke (2013) argue, “no country has reached sustained economic growth without achieving near universal primary education” and conflict has usually been a major obstacle to achieving universal primary education (p. 13). UNICEF was one of the major stakeholders that operated in this domain. While UNTAET and the World Bank focused on reviving the education system, UNICEF concentrated on childhood care, training for primary school teachers and curriculum development. It also provided basic teaching and learning material for primary school teachers and supported a programme to foster child-centred teaching as well as training teachers to work with children with special needs (UNICEF, 2001).

Nevertheless, one of the major problems facing the primary education sector during the transition period was the relatively small number of teachers. The ratio of students to teachers in 2001 was 60 to 1 (UNDP, 2002, p. 6). When one considers that under two thirds of children who are of primary school age were attending school in 2002, the lowest in the East Asia/Pacific region (UNICEF, 2005), this ratio becomes even more significant. Such a high ratio meant that the quality of education for individual students was reduced. By 2003, however, progress was being made and the ratio of students to teachers dropped to 45 to 1 (Taylor-Leech, 2009, p. 49).

Partly due to the uncertainties of the transition period, there were few attempts at curriculum development, and this compounded the problem of quality education.

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At primary level, the Indonesian curriculum was largely retained. Grades 1 and 2 had standard Portuguese books that covered the early primary programme. On the contrary, the other primary grades had a limited curriculum of mathematics and science for years 4 and 5, with Portuguese as a second language, and mathematics, science and social science for years 3 and 6 (UNDP, 2002, p. 53). In the years after the transition period, the Ministry of Education and Culture (MoEC) committed itself to the development of a new national curriculum for all primary school grades and approved a Strategic Plan for Universal Primary Completion by 2015. In June 2005, the Primary Curriculum Implementation Plan was approved. The new Timorese Primary Curriculum was to be phased in from grade 1 in 2005 to grade 6 by 2010/2011. By 2008, the government also decided that schooling would be compulsory to Year 9 and that Years 7 to 9 would comprise a junior, essentially Middle School, while secondary schools would be focussed upon Years 10-12 (Beck & Araujo, 2013, p. 163).

Despite the emphasis on improving the primary school system, it remained fragile. In 2013, it was estimated that only half of all school-aged children completed primary school. In addition, the repetition rate is as high as 16%. According to the United Nations Development Assistance Framework 2009-2013, such a high rate of repetition indicates the need “for strengthened promotion of mother tongue-based learning” (UN, 2009, p. 19).

SECONDARY EDUCATION

After the referendum in 1999, more than three-quarters of secondary school teachers, who were Indonesian, fled Timor-Leste never to return. Staffing of senior secondary schools has been particularly difficult because it had been heavily dependent on Indonesian teachers and their departure was not followed by large-scale recruitment. There was an attempt to remedy the problem during the transition period, but the majority of secondary school teachers at that time were still university students who had not received any teacher training at all. Of the 2091 secondary school teachers for the 2000/01 school year, for example, only 106 had formal teacher training (UNDP, 2002, p. 52). The result was that secondary school teachers complained about their lack of training in pedagogy, maintaining discipline in the classroom, and the transfer of knowledge. Consequently, teachers resorted to using forceful disciplinary measures and this contributed progressively to the increasing levels of student absenteeism (Millo & Barnett, 2004, p. 731). Nevertheless, from January 2000, teachers started to be paid from the UNTAET-administered Combined Funds for Timor-Leste (Supit, 2008, p. 14). Since that time the number of secondary teachers has increased and changes to the school system meant that senior schools now focus upon Years 10-12 and generally there are two types of high schools. The general secondary prepares student for further professional education while the technical secondary prepares those who are entering the labour market at the end of their schooling.

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TERTIARY EDUCATION

During the assessment period, JAM judged partnerships with international universities to be of critical importance for the tertiary sector, particularly in supporting and training students. It also recommended that “accelerated teacher training be instituted to train volunteers, graduate students and others who will fulfil the immediate need for teachers” (Nicolai, 2004, p. 74). Conversely, the UNDP report that was published in 2002 urged caution. The report recommended that the tertiary sector, and the National University of Timor-Leste in particular, consider offering quality education to a smaller cohort of students rather than offering numerous courses to larger, but overcrowded and poorly qualified cohorts (UNDP, 2002, p. 54). Nevertheless, the report echoed JAM’s recommendation that the National University focus most of its resources on developing its faculty of education because teacher training was a priority if Timor-Leste was to rebuild itself (UNDP, 2002, p. 54). In March 2003, La’o Hamutuk , a local journal reporting on social and cultural issues in Timor-Leste, published an overview of higher education in the country. It reported that of the fourteen tertiary institutions then in the country, most were in a ‘worrisome’ situation with few resources, uncertain funding and lack of qualified staff (Higher Education in East Timor, 2003).

The National University of Timor-Leste reopened in November 2000 and recommenced education courses for secondary schools. By October 2001, it had some 5000 enrolments and promoted the work of the agriculture, technology, economics, education and political science faculties and supported the development of Tetum (East Timor, 2002). However, besides the Catholic Teachers College in Baucau, there were no tertiary education institutions that offered primary teacher training, although the government had a professional development unit to help those teaching in primary schools. It is within this context that the partnership was established at Baucau that will be discussed at length in the next chapter. There was, and still is, a serious lack of tertiary institutions that provide professional skills and training in Timor-Leste. Some undergraduate scholarships allow studies in such countries as Portugal, Australia, and New Zealand and a small percentage of students are undergoing their tertiary studies in Cuba and Indonesia. However, there remains limited opportunity to advance to tertiary studies for most young people in Timor-Leste. The improving high school system does allow 15000 to 20000 students to graduate each year, but in 2013 only 2000-3000 of these students then went onto higher education.

THE LANGUAGE CONUNDRUM

One of the most difficult predicaments faced by the Timorese after the vote for independence was the issue of language. The people of Timor-Leste already faced a great challenge in dealing with the multiplicity of languages in their country. Between them, they spoke some thirty different local languages. To aggravate the

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problem, the government decided to enshrine Portuguese, along with Tetum, the local lingua franca , into the constitution as the official language of Timor-Leste. Even though Beck (2006) has logically explained that Bahasa Indonesia could not be adopted as a national language because “it is linked to a period of oppression” (p. 147), not everyone subscribes to that viewpoint. Steele (2002), for example, argued that UNTAET must bear responsibility for this situation because it permitted Xanana Gusmao and Fretilin to institute Portuguese when only 5% of the population spoke it (p. 80). Taylor-Leech (2005), on the other hand, has approached the issue from a different perspective altogether. She has argued that the promotion of multiple languages in Timor-Leste will protect multilingualism “by allowing space for all languages in the system and that a model of additive multilingualism offers the best chance of an inclusive and accommodating language policy” (p. 116).

In terms of the development of education after the violence, the government introduced Portuguese progressively as the language of instruction, beginning with grades 1 and 2. In 2001, some 500 Portuguese teachers arrived in Timor-Leste to assist language development in primary schools among teachers and pupils while 500 Timorese primary teachers were sent to Portugal for language study. However, as Quinn (2007) has pointed out, these measures all ran contrary to both UNESCO and World Bank policies, which advocated that students have the right to begin schooling in the “first language”, the mother tongue (p. 252). Furthermore, the 2001 Household Survey found that while 82% of people spoke Tetum and 43% could speak Bahasa Indonesia, only 5% could speak Portuguese. While a mere 2% spoke English (UNDP, 2002, p. 3), there was a desire to learn this language. Among the other local languages, Mambae is spoken by 25%, Makasae by 10%, with Kemak and Bunak being spoken by about 10% of the population. The fact that only a minute number of teachers spoke Portuguese contributed to the shortage of teachers during the transition period. This was somewhat offset by the assistance provided by Portugal to Timor-Leste in the education sector. Portugal gave priority to primary and secondary education by sending Portuguese teachers to Timor-Leste and training East Timorese teachers. It also assisted in providing textbooks to grades 1 and 2 at the ratio of one book to six students as well as rebuilding the infrastructure in the tertiary sector (Portuguese Support, 2002).

In the plans for reconstruction of Timor-Leste, the government brought in a team of curriculum developers from Brazil to develop the first truly Timorese curriculum, which was then moderated by Portuguese curriculum planners. The plan was to build up national curriculum from pre-school to senior high school, one level at a time. By 2008, the curriculum was up to the pre-secondary level, with some subjects already being taught in Portuguese. The lack of materials for teaching meant that teachers were using Indonesian text books, translating content into Portuguese or Tetum for use in the schools – not an easy proposition. The problem of language has presented difficulties in adopting change. There is no common language, for example, that can be used to teach teachers. This has created confusion among teachers. In theory, Portuguese and Tetum were to be used as languages of instruction. However, Beck

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and Araujo (2013) point out that, in reality, teachers use various languages to assist students to learn, including Portuguese, Tetum, Bahasa Indonesia, and the local language. As one Timorese teacher explained:

We use two languages in grade six …In grade four we use three languages… In grade three we use three languages as well: local language, Portuguese and Tetum…This is because we don’t know exactly what language to use… Firstly, we try to find a way or a method to use so that the children can quickly understand the concepts. Secondly, we are also being told in the workshops or training to use other languages such as the local language or dialect to help the children (Quinn, 2005, p. 114).

Pragmatically, teachers made choices that reflected the goals of the curricula and their language. As late as 2008, teachers still did not have the capacity to teach in Portuguese and many educators used a mixture of Tetum and Bahasa Indonesia to teach (Earnest et al., 2008, p. 83). In addition, parents and students who do not speak Portuguese and are, therefore, unable to understand school procedures and communicate with staff, face marginalisation (MoEC, 2005, p. 12). In 2005, the Ministry of Education accepted Tetum as the medium of instruction in the first two grades of school following some intense debate over the issue of early literacy in a child’s first language.

It must be pointed out that there are advantages to a bilingual education system. Children who grow up in a multilingual environment from an early age are more likely to be literate. Students who are bilingual have a more complex vocabulary than monolingual children and have the ability to use language as a cognitive tool. Nyland (2004) argues that “The earlier a child is exposed to other languages, the easier they are to learn” (p. 54). Either way, the language conundrum in Timor-Leste is not likely to be resolved any time soon and teachers will likely continue to use various languages in instruction in educational establishments. This will only add to the uncertainty that already exists in the education system of a country that is still trying to stand on its own two feet.

CONCLUSION

For some five hundred years, the East Timorese were colonised, invaded, and disenfranchised from the political and educational processes of their own country. Although a small minority was educated under Portuguese colonial rule, this was to serve the Portuguese interests rather than to build the capacity of the East Timorese. Under Indonesian rule, the East Timorese maintained a tradition of resistance, even to education, in trying to resist a system which was set up by the invaders to ‘Indonesianise’ the local population. Rather than the people being at the centre of the education process before 1999, it was imposed upon them. Even though UNDP (2002) has described education as “one of the most critical components of human development” (p. 47), prior to independence, education served the interests of the political powers of the day.

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After Timor-Leste gained independence, education had the potential, for the first time, to be given to the Timorese by the Timorese, but there was only limited capacity to deliver it. After the 1999 referendum, the government and the Catholic Church both began the task of rebuilding in order to provide education for the nation. The Church formed partnerships with religious orders and external bodies to provide not only vocational education to assist young people in gaining employment, but also professional education to form future teachers. It was in this context that ICFP was established by a partnership of the diocese of Baucau, the Marist Brothers, and Australian Catholic University. ICFP provided crucial professional education in filling a critical gap in Timor-Leste’s education system. The next chapter will cover the history of this partnership.

PART II

COMMITTING TO THE PARTNERSHIP

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CHAPTER 4

HISTORY OF THE PARTNERSHIP

The co-operative partnership described in this book resulted in the formation of ICFP Baucau, and promoted educational capacity building in Timor-Leste in the post-referendum period. Creating a partnership that would focus on educational capacity building in Timor-Leste in the aftermath of the referendum, therefore, was crucial in the rehabilitation of the small country. This chapter presents the history of the partnership, and forms the basis for subsequent chapters that analyse and evaluate the collective roles of the partners and the ways in which they worked together to establish ICFP as an expression of their commitment to the people of Timor-Leste.

ORIGINS OF THE PARTNERSHIP

In 1999, events in different parts of the world would lead to the creation of an educational partnership between the Marist Brothers and the Diocese of Baucau. The major event was the successful vote for independence in 1999 that left the Timorese in charge of their country but with a devastated infrastructure, leaving educational institutions in need of reconstruction. World sympathy was focussed on Timor-Leste in the months after August as the Indonesians left a path of destruction as a result of their rejection by the East Timorese people.

The second event in 1999 was the canonisation in Rome of Marcellin Champagnat, founder of the Marist Brothers. This was of great significance in the history of the Brothers and, to mark the occasion, the General Council commissioned every Province of the worldwide Congregation to start a new project in honour of the event. The Provincial of the Melbourne Province of the Marist Brothers at that time, Brother Jim Jolley, visited Timor-Leste soon after the referendum of 30 August. He met with the two bishops, Dom Carlos Belo of Dili and Dom Basilio do Nascimento of Baucau, and made an offer for the Brothers to work in the country in educational projects. Bishop Basilio accepted the offer as he had strong links with the Marist Brothers in Portugal and also knew of the Order’s work in France and in Mexico. He invited the Brothers to be involved in two projects in his Diocese. The first would be to establish and operate a primary teacher education college in Baucau and the second would be to establish a secondary school for mainstream and vocational education in the township of Laclubar, a remote rural town in the District of Manatuto. The teacher training project flourished but, due to local circumstances, the school project was not realised.

The contribution of the Marist Brothers to the partnership was through their charism, leadership and credibility over a long history of involvement in education,

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and in the worldwide operation of schools and colleges at primary, secondary and tertiary levels. The commitment to the vision, mission and sustainability of ICFP at the level of Province Leaders has continued from that of Brother Jim Jolley, through Brother Paul Gilchrist and Brother Julian Casey to Brother Jeff Crowe, current leader of the new Province of Australia. The Marist Brothers had the resources of personnel and experience to undertake the task and to appoint suitably qualified and skilled Brothers who possessed entrepreneurial flair and resourcefulness. They were also able to draw upon broad professional and religious networks for advice and support. This gave every indication that they would be able to cope with the varying circumstances and challenges that would emerge as the project developed.

Clearly, Bishop Basilio had a significant role to play in the establishment of the partnership, and his presence and his contributions were vital to its success. Born in Suai in 1950, he had been ordained in 1977 and spent twenty years in Portugal and France before returning to East Timor in 1994 and then becoming bishop of Baucau in 1997. In 1999, Xanama Gusmao publicly thanked the Bishop for the support that he and the Church had given in the struggle for independence from the Indonesians. The Bishop possessed considerable national prestige that went beyond his Episcopal office. As a result, his moral support and his influence could open many doors in Dili and provide access to authorities and resources. In conversations and negotiations with government and other authorities, the question was frequently asked: ‘What does the bishop think about this?’ A positive response often provided a breakthrough in these talks. Such a position was in contrast to many NGOs that operated in Timor-Leste at the time that were not as well placed in gaining access to or dealing with government authorities.

Bishop Basilio had given priority to establishing suitable infrastructure for the operation of the Diocese and to the San Jose Catholic Education Foundation, located in the town of Baucau, which co-ordinated the diocesan education system. However, despite his interest in education, the demands upon the Bishop were time consuming. Between 2002 and 2004, he would have additional administrative responsibilities for the Diocese of Dili following the resignation of Bishop Belo and before the appointment of his successor. Therefore, the establishment of the teachers’ college was entrusted to the Marist Brother who created the Catholic Teachers College (CTC) at Baucau in 2001.

Situated 122 km east of Dili, Baucau is the second-largest district in Timor-Leste with a population of around 104000. The town of Baucau, with about 16000 inhabitants, is situated 512 metres above sea level and enjoys a more moderate temperature than most of the surrounding district. Bishop Basilio was conscious in 1999 that the centre of government, including education and all other services for the new country, was located in Dili, and that the majority of post-independence development and reconstruction was taking place in the capital. This correlates with the literature for post-conflict and small nations, which suggests that one of the challenges is to create equal opportunities in education for students, particularly for those living in rural and remote areas (Bacchus, 2008). However, Baucau was closer

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to the geographical centre of the new nation than the capital and the proposal to set up and provide the initial management of a teacher-training facility was of course an initiative of the Diocese of Baucau (Van Rooij, 2011, p. 31). This meant that the Bishop was in the position to provide support and local access to land, property, resources and personnel without reference to Dili. The project could then overcome another problem common to many post-conflict states, where the government tends to centralise power and deny any real voice to its local areas.

As well, such an educational institution would have economic and social benefits for the people of Baucau and provide opportunities and resources for the professional development of the College staff and teachers in local schools. Although many schools were badly damaged or destroyed during 1999, the district had the potential to become an important educational centre. By 2012, it had 72 primary schools, 15 junior secondary schools, three secondary schools and two vocational schools, with a total student population of nearly 26000 and 700 teachers (Direcção Nacional Estatistica [DNE], 2011). However, over time, experience has shown that Baucau as a site did present significant challenges, because Dili has remained the centre for Ministry activities, meetings and communications. The distance from Baucau to Dili has meant that each return trip for staff can be expensive in terms of fuel, overnight accommodation and time.

The Arrival of the Marist Brothers

After the confirmation of their offer to contribute to educational capacity building in Timor-Leste, the Marist Brothers began preparing for the establishment of a community of Brothers to start the project. The Provincial gained congregational support for this mission, describing it in terms of an international project open to Marist Provinces in other parts of the world. As the Melbourne Province was already highly committed to many projects within Australia and overseas, further help was sought from other Provinces to enable the East Timorese project to proceed. The Province of Portugal offered one of their Brothers, Irmão Manuel da Silva. Because Timor-Leste was previously a Portuguese colony, this appointment was seen as a positive act and added language expertise to the enterprise.

The first group of Brothers arrived in Timor-Leste on 1 September 2000. Prior to this, however, a number of resources had been brought in on the Australian ship HMAS Jervis Bay that was making regular trips to Timor-Leste from Darwin, bringing in cargoes of relief supplies. Brother Mark Paul accepted the challenge of establishing the new community of Brothers and laying the foundations of the proposed teachers college. He was an experienced educator at primary, secondary and tertiary levels and had extensive involvement in social justice projects in Australia with marginalised young people. Also, he was a person with vision and commitment and the ability to tap into existing networks for professional growth and capacity building. Joining him on the project were Brother Michael Herry who would work in the area of music within the College and the parish; Brother

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Canute Sheehan who was the equipment support person; Brother Irmão Manuel da Silva who taught Portuguese; and Brother Stephen Bugg who performed in-service English. These Brothers rented a house in Baucau and this has continued to be the community residence to the present day.

Jose Mendes, the first Timorese professional staff member to be employed, was to assist the Brothers. It was important to have a local who was familiar with government and local administration, was fluent in the local languages as well as English, and was well-connected within the community. Jose provided credibility and advice in negotiations with government, community and partners regarding the establishment of the College.

CASEPET

Brother Mark began his educational endeavours with a grant of US$60000 he had received from ‘lobbying’ the Bishop as well as a small space within the Diocesan complex in Baucau as a base for his activities. The Marist Brothers soon had an important leadership role when Caritas Sweden resumed its Educational Project for East Timor (CASEPET) for the provision of professional development of teachers with the Catholic education foundations of the Dioceses of Dili and Baucau. Brother Mark became the Co-ordinator of this Caritas project after the resignation of the initial coordinator. The involvement of other Marist Brothers and volunteers from Australia in CASEPET until 2006 contributed significantly to the sustainability, effectiveness and credibility of the project and to the status of the new College in the eyes of the different stakeholders. The review of this project by staff of ACU provided opportunities for the partners to collaborate in teacher professional development and research with Catholic Church organisations nationally and internationally and with staff of the Ministry of Education in the government of Timor-Leste.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CATHOLIC TEACHERS COLLEGE AND ICFP

History

The campus of Catholic Teachers College was established in the Old Town of Baucau near the Markets and Cathedral, using both church land and other buildings that were available for rent. There were problems with complicated land titles and government regulations. While leases and buildings have changed over the years, the institution has essentially remained within the same general area in which it was originally established.

When the College was first established, it had three rooms for teaching and a building for administration, and was given access to other rooms in the nearby Salesian community as needed. By 2003, the College had a teaching and learning centre with a capacity for 100 students, an administration block, residences and offices for thirty staff and a resource centre. Planning was also underway for an IT

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centre, literacy, music and student services centres, a science laboratory and more teaching space. Although the majority of these premises were rented, they were renovated to make them suitable for the operation of the College. At this stage, CTC received financial support for up to six years from the European Union, Caritas Sweden, Misereor Germany, Swedish Mission Council, National Catholic Education Commission of Australia and the Marist Brothers of Australia.

Professional Development

In order to establish an educational profile in Timor-Leste, the College began by conducting in-service training for small groups of teachers in general subject areas in 2002. The initial professional development offerings were provided by volunteer teachers from Catholic Education Offices in Australia and included the offering of English and Portuguese to teachers across the district of Baucau. Brother Mark rented a house in Baucau for these volunteer teachers.

The need for a professional teaching body was great, and CTC could only provide a limited amount of nation-wide professional development, depending on the funding by agencies supporting the College. Initially, it provided short-term courses to meet the pressing need of training existing teachers in the areas of Physics, Languages and School Leadership and Teaching and Classroom Management. Physics was chosen because there was a suitably qualified US volunteer teacher at the College, Curt Gabrielson, who was very keen to lead this project and published a teacher’s handbook in the subject in Tetum. This handbook has since been widely used throughout Timor-Leste. Brenda Keenan, a volunteer from the Sandhurst Diocese in Victoria, Australia, brought essential management capacity to the College with respect to its own internal operation as well as to the management of its professional development offerings.

Despite the professional needs of teachers, there were difficulties in the implementation of suitable development activities. A major problem was the government requirement for the introduction of compulsory Portuguese language classes for all teachers. The time demands of these classes made it difficult to expand the range of the professional development courses. Another difficulty was that in order to participate in this training, many teachers were out of school for up to three days a week, or for three or four afternoons a week. To alleviate these problems, the College sent its staff to various centres throughout the country to offer professional development. This was an example of CTC’s early commitment to teacher training across all regions of the country.

Despite these problems, the professional development activities further raised the profile of the College and it quickly became recognised in the educational community as a credible provider of quality in-service programmes. Its next step was to move towards developing a nationally accredited and internationally recognised teacher-training course. To develop such courses and provide curriculum structures and quality assurance processes in the academic programme, Australian Catholic

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University was invited to join the partnership. CTC’s name was then changed to Instituto Católico para a Formação de Professores (ICFP) as part of the move to further reflect Portuguese as the official language.

PARTNERSHIP WITH AUSTRALIAN CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY

History

In 2002, Brother Mark had sought the assistance of staff from Australian Catholic University to act in a consultancy role for a review of the CASEPET project. Professor Jude Butcher, the Head of the School of Education (NSW) and Professor Tony d’Arbon from the School of Educational Leadership assumed responsibility for the review with the assistance of a colleague, Professor Mark McFadden. The review, completed mid-year, documented the impact of the programme and it was a one-off initiative. Having established this link, the Brothers then enlisted the support of ACU to be the underwriter of courses that would be developed and offered by the CTC. ACU would assist in establishing quality assurance processes and providing academic oversight for a Certificate of Teaching and Learning and a three-year primary education course that would commence in October 2003.

The Certificate of Teaching and Learning, a four-unit course, was made available through ACU for teachers without formal qualifications with only a nominal fee being charged to the students. However, this revenue could be retained by CTC/ICFP as ACU granted use of the Certificate at no cost. CTC/ICFP offered this course that was taught by trainers employed by Children in Crisis, a London-based Non-Government Organisation. By 2013, more than 400 teachers had graduated with the Certificate, and they had come from the Catholic sector, government sector, vocational training centres and early childhood centres. It remains an important component of the Institute’s professional training for existing teachers.

In the early 2000s, there was no tertiary institution in the country that offered training for primary school teachers. Some aspiring teachers were fortunate enough to be sent to Indonesia for a two-year Diploma course. Within Timor-Leste, UNTL provided a secondary teacher education course, but for most primary school teachers, the only available teacher training was a parallel senior high school course that included some basic training. At first, it was proposed to follow the Indonesian model of a two year Diploma but after further discussion with ACU and the Ministry of Education, it was decided to introduce a three-year degree course, based upon the ACU model. This agreement with ACU meant that in 2003, ICFP was in a position to offer a three-year undergraduate degree programme for primary school teachers. The Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) course was based upon the University’s primary teacher education course for Australian Indigenous students, with the units on Indigenous history and culture being replaced by units on history and cultures of Timor-Leste. It would be the first degree course for primary teaching in Timor-Leste.

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ACU brought to the partnership a commitment to quality in teaching, research and community engagement and an ability to make specific contributions through curriculum development, course accreditation and quality assurance. The involvement of qualified personnel from within Timor-Leste and Australia to conduct the course provided the students with confidence that the awards were of quality and value and negotiable in the wider national and international academic communities

Creation of the Vision Statement

Prior to the commencement of the degree course, ICFP set up a Steering Committee that was facilitated by Professors Jude Butcher and Tony d’Arbon to advise it on matters of policy and direction. The Committee was made up of representatives from religious congregations or orders and produced a Vision Statement that would focus and guide the future development of the institution. This ensured that the emphasis in the statement would be Catholic and would uphold those values espoused by the Christian community. This Vision Statement was drawn up in three languages – Portuguese, Tetum and English – so that all who read it could understand it. The English translation of the statement was subsequently modified and read as follows:

The Instituto Católico para a Formação de Professores, with the people of East Timor, is committed to developing quality, professional teachers through a holistic approach and in the context of the Catholic faith and the culture of East Timor. The Institute is also committed to being a lighthouse for advancing quality East Timorese curriculum and education with the people, Church and country. It is committed to advancing a culture of leadership in the country. The Institute respects people from different faith traditions and cultures. Graduates are to be scholars and capable practitioners who are committed to teaching as a life-long vocation. They would be good citizens who are committed to spiritual and ethical values. (ICFP, 2006, p. 5)

The Vision Statement expressed a commitment to a holistic approach to teacher education within the context of a faith-based curriculum and the culture of Timor-Leste. Its approach was both inclusive, based upon respect for the people from different faith traditions and cultures, and focused on the development of good citizens who are committed to spiritual and ethical values. The emphasis in the vision statement on ‘in the country’ meant that ICFP had a goal of drawing student teachers from the thirteen districts and providing graduates for the whole country, rather than just the Baucau District.

ACU Capacity Support

The partnership between ICFP and ACU developed from the professional collaboration that had previously existed between Brother Mark Paul and Professors Jude Butcher

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and Tony d’Arbon as well as Professor Gabrielle McMullen, ACU’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) and Professor Judith Chapman, Dean of Education at that time. ACU covered all costs for the quality assessment and quality assurance of the courses as well as organising the waiving of the customary enrolment and administrative costs for the students. The University also endorsed and facilitated the secondment of Ms. Margie Beck, a lecturer from the Faculty of Education at ACU, to the College.

Margie Beck was well suited for her role in the Institute, being responsible for overseeing the academic quality of the course and course rules and regulations, and for developing the student administration system. ACU supported her in developing these procedures and systems by making available its resources, policies and procedures. She had extensive professional experience with her long teaching experience as a classroom teacher and as a member of staff of ACU and its predecessor Colleges. Furthermore, she had been effective in establishing professional learning partnerships between ACU and schools in Sydney and had taught ACU’s Certificate of Religious Education to teachers in Papua New Guinea. Her understanding of the quality assurance processes of ACU proved invaluable when assisting with the strategy in preparing the Institute for the submission for national accreditation. She first came to Baucau in 2002 offering a professional development course on teaching skills to teachers. She was then invited to return in 2003 as Coordinator of the Bachelor of Teaching course and later became Deputy Director of ICFP.

Her commitment to the people of Baucau and ICFP was evident in a special way in her:

refusing to leave East Timor during recent civil unrest. She believes that by staying, a message of hope was being portrayed rather than one of despair that her leaving might have projected. (d’Arbon, 2006)

Jude Butcher also continued his links with the partnership through being the principal officer for the University to liaise with ICFP and to ensure that its capacity building was a sustained priority on the part of ACU. He reported on the partnership and ACU matters to the Vice-Chancellor, the Provost, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), and the Dean of the Faculty of Education. Professor Butcher also included information related to ICFP graduations and related ICFP matters in his reports to ACU’s Academic Board when appropriate. Professor Tony d’Arbon continued to play a key role in establishing important links and acted as bridge between the University and the Marist Brothers.

The coming together and blending of these interests and capacities of the partners in the new Institute developed a tertiary institution with an ability to produce qualified teachers. The graduates would “be highly competent in their chosen fields, ethical in their behaviour, with a developed critical habit of mind, an appreciation of the sacred in life, and a commitment to serving the common good” as envisaged in the Mission

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statement of ACU (1998). In addition, this initiative was distinctive because it was an open-ended commitment rather than one defined by budget or even time.

Memoranda of Understanding

The Memoranda of Understanding and the various agreements between the partners partially helped to define the partnership. On 16 November 2003, the Bishop, ACU’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Peter Sheehan and Brother Mark Paul on behalf of the ICFP, signed the first Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to foster co-operation between the two institutions. A further agreement formalising the secondment of Margie Beck from ACU to ICFP was also signed. The MOU contained a strong vision for the nation that was shared by all the partners. Professor Sheehan said: “Education is at the heart of nation building and will lay the foundations for the future peace and prosperity of East Timor” (East Timor and Indonesia Action Network [ETAN], 2004).

At the same ceremony, the Bishop and the Provincial of the Marist Brothers, Brother Paul Gilchrist, signed a separate agreement that set out to show a foundational and sustained commitment to the educational enterprise and the ongoing presence of the Brothers in the Institute.

Subsequent MOUs reflected the growth of the partnership and the partners’ solidarity in action. This joint commitment was articulated further in the 2008 MOU that stated: “The relationship between ACU and ICFP is one of historical significance, grounded in their shared commitment to Catholic education and social justice” (ACU & ICFP, 2008, p. 1). The signing of this second MOU signified the consolidation of this ongoing relationship. ACU and ICFP renewed the MOU on 10 February 2012 for the academic years 2012 to 2015. This MOU was subsequently revised in light of later changes relating to the national educational policy of Timor-Leste that impacted on the employment of graduates. This resulted in the University handing over the intellectual property of ACU courses to ICFP. The MOUs expressed a joint and ongoing commitment to quality teacher education, quality assurance, staff capacity building, research and community engagement.

Important as the MOUs were in their expression of the interdependence of the partnership, they were, in one sense, only paper documents. At no stage have the Marist Brothers and ACU ever signed any formal agreement over their roles in the partnership even though they continue to work together on a common mission.

ACU Staff Commitment

The University’s academic and professional units and staff have embraced ACU’s commitment to the Institute and the partnership. Successive Vice-Chancellors, Professor Peter Sheehan and Professor Greg Craven, have endorsed ICFP as a priority for the University’s contribution to the mission of the Church in new or

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developing nations. The Faculty of Education, through the Dean, Professor Marie Emmitt, agreed to ACU’s Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) and Certificate of Teaching and Learning being offered at ICFP and to the secondment of Margie Beck. ACU’s Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) course provided the structure and substance for that course as offered by ICFP and validated by the University. Other senior staff at ACU also offered advice to ICFP in terms of staff development, student enrolment and administration and library infrastructure. In 2003, Dr Ann Gervasoni from the Faculty of Education offered a professional development course in Mathematics Education for the academic staff of ICFP. Jim Graham, a senior member of staff from ACU Library, visited in 2004 and completed a review of the Institute’s library facilities. He also developed with ICFP a strategic plan for using the library facilities and advised on seeking funding for the library.

COURSE DEVELOPMENT

The Bachelor of Teaching (Primary)

The initial primary teaching course comprised thirty-eight units spread over three years. These units were structured in Curriculum Studies, Education Studies, Teaching Studies, Language Studies, (including Portuguese Language) and East Timor Studies that included a unit on the history of East Timor and another on Citizenship and Ethics as well as a separate unit on Tetum and Cultural Studies. Three of the units were in Field Experience where students undertook practice teaching in schools or went on morning weekly visits to schools – all totally new concepts in Timor–Leste at the time. A mixture of Timorese and expatriate staff, mainly Australian, were employed to teach this course.

By 2006, the first students were approaching their graduation in the primary programme at ICFP. As part of ACU’s commitment to the course, it agreed to enrol these students retrospectively as ACU Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) students, thus ensuring they graduated with an international qualification. This retrospective enrolment of students had to be negotiated with and endorsed by the Australian government’s accrediting authority. This commitment was also evident in the visit by Marie Emmitt and Jude Butcher to the Institute in November 2006, when the internal civil unrest was still taking place in Timor-Leste. Later, despite the unrest, they travelled to Baucau by chartered plane ‒ road travel being considered too risky ‒ for the graduation of the first cohort of Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) graduates.

In 2008, the scheduled five-year ACU course review, conducted by an international panel in collaboration with ICFP, resulted in a structure through which the students now graduated with three awards: a Bachelor of Teaching, a Certificate of Liberal Studies and a Certificate of Religious Education. This set of courses gave due acknowledgement to the major areas of study – primary teacher education, Portuguese Language and Religious Education. It also reflected the decision of the

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Timor-Leste government to make schooling compulsory to the end of Year 9, which is discussed later in this chapter.

Staff Development

Initially many of the Timorese academic staff had only limited awareness of course development and Margie Beck’s role was to induct them in the use of the unit outlines that were needed as they set out the basics such as unit objectives, content and assessment policies. They also needed assistance in the use of PowerPoint (provided the power supply did not fail) and other teaching aids as well as an orientation away from using rote learning to a more student-centred learning approach. However, within a short period of time, certainly by the end of the second semester of the course, all of these requirements were quickly adapted within the Institute’s teaching culture.

ICFP policy also advocated that academic staff not only be ideally drawn from Timor-Leste, but lecturers possess at least a Master-level qualification. However, ICFP itself did not offer any postgraduate qualifications. The pattern was soon established for Timorese academic staff to be employed as tutors and then given the opportunity, in terms of time and learning support from Australian staff, to study for a Master’s course through ACU. Further discussion of this staff development is covered in the next chapter.

A New Director

In late 2006, Brother Fons van Rooij succeeded Brother Mark Paul as Director. Brother Fons had a long experience in education and a strong background in school leadership and project management. He had an international background, an extensive knowledge of languages and an awareness of the varied political contexts in which the Institute had to operate. He was well suited to consolidate and then expand ICFP from its early foundations. Since his appointment, he has overseen the growth and professional development of staff, encouraged their academic studies and raised their professional status through postgraduate courses. Brother Fons also increased the resource base and infrastructure of ICFP, particularly in the area of Portuguese teaching, learning and the provision of quality resource materials for the library. In 2011, he initiated the development of plans for a four-storey building, incorporating classrooms, staff and administration offices, library, and maintenance workshops. The construction of this new building, which is the largest and most modern in Baucau, commenced with finance made available through international funding bodies. The purpose of this building is to consolidate the various departments and resources of the current Institute. Its size and scope are symbolic of the confidence of the partners in the future of the enterprise. Brother Fons was integral to the transition of ICFP from its very credible initial development led by Brother Mark Paul until 2006 to its subsequent sustainability and international status acknowledged by external accrediting bodies in 2011 and 2012.

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Course Changes

Over time, the Timor-Leste government has sought to exercise more control in ‘owning’ the country’s education system. Each new government has changed education policies after being elected. When the Government restructured the education system in 2008 to make schooling compulsory to the end of Year 9, ICFP responded by changing the name of its degree from Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) to Bachelor of Teaching (Ensino Basico). This was done to ensure that students would graduate with a degree that matched the requirements of the government. The Institute believed that, with its own course changes, the graduates would have the skills and pedagogy necessary to teach in the third cycle of basic schooling (Years 7-9), and curriculum documents to support their teaching. In fact, by that time, some of the third-year students were already completing their final practicum in these schools rather than in the primary sector.

A more significant impact of government policy was when it stipulated that higher education institutions should be nationally accredited with graduates receiving the award of that institution. Thus, in 2012, no undergraduate students at ICFP could be registered with ACU. Third-year students who completed their studies at the end of 2012 graduated with a Bachelor of Teaching awarded by ICFP rather than by ACU. This government decision had significant implications for ICFP and the role of ACU in the partnership (República Democrática de Timor-Leste, 2009). The transition of course status in 2012, when ICFP assumed sole responsibility for course accreditation, course delivery and student accreditation was a significant point in the partnership. ACU passed over to ICFP the intellectual property for all the courses that the Institute now offered and acknowledged in formal transcripts the units studied and completed by each of the current students. These government changes meant that graduating students did not receive international recognition for their degrees since they were no longer associated with nor accredited by ACU. This issue remains unresolved at the time of writing. However, all of these changes did not end ACU’s partnership with the Institute and the University has remained committed to education capacity building in the future.

CONCLUSION

The emergence of the newly independent nation of Timor-Leste following the referendum of 1999 provided great challenges and opportunities for the growth and development of infrastructure and local resources. Local and international bodies with special interests and resources in domains such as education sought to establish solid and lasting partnerships for capacity building in the areas of their expertise. In terms of capacity building in education, the establishment of an institution for the preparation of primary teachers utilised the goodwill, influence, finance and expertise of the Church, government, business, religious and educational leaders

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in Timor-Leste and internationally. The partners that established ICFP were wholeheartedly committed to the project.

The partnership has grown because of the ongoing commitment of all parties to the people and Church of Timor-Leste through the provision of quality teacher education. The progress of the partnership from 2001 to 2012 has varied according to political and security circumstances but throughout, the partners were determined to act in unison and ensure the success of the project by utilising their capacities and resources. The partnership has embodied an awareness that what was required would vary over time and an acknowledgment that the questions to be addressed would at times be unpredictable. However, it also resolved that underneath it all, the partners’ commitment was flexible in terms of time and scope. It is these aspects of the partnership that will now be examined in the next chapter.

Figure 1. Burnt-out Junior High School, Laclubar December 1999

Figure 2. Marketplace near ICFP in Baucau

Figure 3. Bishop Basilio do Nascimento and Professor Peter Sheehan signing the MOU

Figure 4. Opening ceremony of ICFP October 2003

Figure 5. Margie Beck with ICFP graduates

Figure 6. ICFP students in classroom

Figure 7. Marcellin Champagnat Creche on the campus

Figure 8. Student-teacher on practicum

Figure 9. Primary school children

Figure 10. First graduation cohort 2006

Figure 11. President Jose Ramos Horta with ICFP staff in 2006

Figure 12. Paddy Kenneally, Australian war veteran and Rufino Silva, his companion and guide from World War II

Figure 13. ICFP Staff at Graduation 2012 with ACU Dean of Education

Figure 14. ICFP and ACU staff at International Educational Leadership Conference 2013

Figure 15. New ICFP building

Figure 16. Farmacia (clinic) - healthy communities, Baucau

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CHAPTER 5

SCOPE OF THE PARTNERSHIP

As seen in the previous chapter, the partners were involved in establishing a new educational enterprise in Timor-Leste and developing new capacities and opportunities by working together with a shared vision. This project has grown significantly since the commencement of the partnership. In this chapter, aspects of the scope of the partnership at ICFP are presented in terms of students and graduates, quality assurance of the course and staffing and capacity building. This chapter examines how the partnership has expanded to include other initiatives.

ICFP

The scope of the partnership can be viewed in the work of ICFP and particularly through the selection and graduation of its students, in the development of academic quality assurance that enhances the integrity of the Institute and in its providing professional development and capacity building for its Timorese staff

The Selection and Support of Students

The emphasis, from the beginning of the primary teacher education programme at ICFP, was to be upon drawing students from the whole country, rather than from the Baucau district, in order to overcome regional disadvantages. This included the Oecusse district, some eighty kilometres from the continuous part of Timor-Leste and surrounded by Indonesian West Timor. The second emphasis was to implement a selection process that could be seen by the community as fair. It would also eliminate any hints of possible favouritism that could easily take place in a highly personalised society such as Timor-Leste. Margie Beck took responsibility for the implementation of these selection processes that have been followed to the present day. However, this was done in consultation with an advisory committee composed of school principals from Baucau and a representative from the Ministry of Education. She also had the support of local staff members who assisted with the establishment of student administration and advised her on a wide range of Timorese customs in order that she did not create a system that was out of alignment with local feelings.

In order to publicise the Institute’s new course, aside from advertisements in the Timor Post newspaper, two staff members spent over a week covering all of the country delivering publicity packages, brochures and application forms to senior high schools and parish priests and then they returned three weeks later to collect the completed applications. All 120 applicants were then invited to centres (Baucau,

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Dili and Maubere) to sit for an examination and be interviewed by panels of school principals and teachers. To overcome any selection bias, all interviewers undertook a training morning and then, despite the inconvenience of travel, Dili interviewers were sent to Baucau, while Baucau interviewers travelled to Dili and Maubere. Students were then made offers to come to the Institute based upon these procedures. Since that time, the processes have been refined and the Directors have been able to point to them as the way students gain entry to the Institute whenever phone calls or approaches were made to try to gain special consideration for an applicant.

In the first years of ICFP, the Student Services Department, were responsible for the pastoral care of the students. Its two staff took responsibility for all student needs, including spiritual and financial matters, and also advising them on their accommodation if they did not come from Baucau. They were attentive to the students’ transition into Institute life and formal study and also (for the majority of students) their transition from life in a village to life in a much larger town such as Baucau. Subsequently, the Deputy Director and the appropriate administrative staff undertook these pastoral responsibilities. Each year, students in financial need were able to access scholarships for their tuition and living costs. By 2013, nearly half of the students at ICFP received some scholarship assistance usually funded from donors abroad, especially in Australia. Of course, ICFP can only do so much. Its students are selected from those who finish high school, and while it has attempted to cover the whole nation, it is still drawing upon the smaller number of students who have completed high school while many Timorese barely finish their primary education.

Since 2003, ICFP has continued to enrol around 50 full-time students a year with an average of 47 graduating each year since 2006 (See Table 5.1 ). This intake number has been considered all that the Institute could manage given its resources, even though the demand for student places has remained high and Timor–Leste needs more trained teachers. ICFP resisted the move to bring in larger numbers of students because it could not fairly resource them and it was considered that the course and Institute would be strained by such a move. The introduction of teacher education courses by other institutions or organisations in Timor-Leste has eased this pressure, and by 2012 there was a reduced number of student applications. However, in 2013 there was a small increase again in the number of applicants for the course.

Ensuring equal opportunities for both genders was one of the concepts designed to promote and increase the quality of education in Timor-Leste (Beck & Araujo, 2013, p. 164). The concept was implemented by ICFP. The gender balance of students that enrolled at ICFP changed from 2003/4 to 2013. The number of males enrolled in the first years far exceeded the number of females. Over the years, the number of female students increased and surpassed the number of enrolled males. So much so, that in 2012, there were 14 male and 37 female students enrolled and in 2013, 15 males and 42 females were enrolled. A number of the students who enrolled in 2013 subsequently took leave for various reasons. This changing gender balance was in keeping with national trends as more women have been entering primary teaching since the collapse of the Indonesian school system.

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Graduate Employability

An important measure of the progress and scope of the partnership has been in the employability of the graduates. Those who received employment as teachers could apply modern teaching methods, new skills, expertise and initiative in a nation where teacher training is often limited. As this news spread, the number of students from each graduating class who received direct offers of employment in government and Catholic schools increased. An ICFP staff member has reported that students who had completed their studies at ICFP had become models of teaching and learning in the classroom and were exercising a leadership role in local education (A. M. Freitas, personal communication, July 19, 2013). In 2012, the Ministry of Education approached the Third Year graduates with an offer to provide placements in the Escolas Referencia – one school in each of the five districts throughout the country designed to be ‘lighthouse’ institutions specialising in teaching using the Portuguese language. After an entrance exam and interviews, 42 ICFP students from the 49 finalists, and seven ICFP graduates from previous years were given a teaching position for one year in these schools, with the commitment to a permanent contract the following year. Apart from ICFP, Universidade Nacional Timor-Leste (UNTL) was the only other tertiary institution from which graduates were chosen for this programme. Since then, a further eleven former graduates have been employed in the Escolas Referencia . Outside of these schools, however, graduates have obtained employment in both Catholic and government schools across the country and sometimes in other government non-teaching roles. The employability of all graduates is also a reflection of the value of the course, the capacity and

Table 5.1. Student and graduate numbers

Year Number of Applicants

Number of commencing students

Number of graduates

2003/4 224 53 – 2004/5 640 50 – 2005/6 453 50 – 2006/7 260 50 43 2007/8 640 46 49 2008/9 177 48 48 2010 268 55 45 2011 245 63 42 2012 121 51 49 2013 130 51 49 Total 3158 517 325

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quality of the staff and the Institute’s ongoing quality assurance monitoring as well as its staffing capacities.

Quality Assurance

From the beginning of the ACU designed courses being offered at ICFP, formal attention was always given to the most appropriate structures, policies and procedures to ensure the quality and credibility of the courses. Building on the initial teacher professional development focus at the school and village levels in 2001, the partnership was able to offer the Certificate of Teaching and Learning in 2002 and the Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) in 2003. Both were conducted in partnership with ACU. The curriculum for both courses was based on courses already being offered either at ACU itself or in other developing countries. The partners were able to achieve international recognition for the Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) course when in 2006 ACU formally adopted the course and had it recognised by the Australian government’s accreditation agencies.

The quality assurance of the courses initially incorporated ACU’s policies and procedures that provided the framework for the Institute rather than having to develop all of the policies on its own. Margie Beck’s role in this process was a twofold one. She reported back to ACU’s Faculty of Education that was responsible for carrying through the University’s legislative accountability for quality assurance of its courses. These included the course accreditation and oversight plus the submission of ICFP’s annual handbook and report to ACU, and in-country and internal moderation of course unit structure, content, student assessment and distribution of grades, and mode of offering. The quality assurance also required that policies and procedures were in place for student appeals and ‘challenges’. Student unit evaluations in ICFP were based upon ACU’s unit evaluation item bank and procedures. Qualified East Timorese from outside ICFP, including Brother Marçal Lopes and Sister Jacinta Gusmão, were also invited by both ACU and ICFP to be involved in the in-country external moderation of student assessment as part of the quality assurance processes.

Margie Beck’s second role was to ensure that these policies were actually implemented within ICFP and were understood and followed by its staff and administration. This was done through regular meetings of the teaching staff. “The teaching staff meets weekly to discuss issues pertaining to the course, and minutes of these meetings are made by the Deputy Director and copied to the Director” (ICFP, 2009, p.12). In addition to these weekly staff meetings, there was a Guideline for Teaching Staff, updated annually, which spelt out the duties and responsibilities of each academic staff member. The value of this document lies in the fact that staff were made fully aware of what was expected of them and that there would be consistency in preparing unit outlines, marking to set criteria and providing basic information that a new staff member will need in order to become

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familiar with the structure of the Institute. Another facet of quality assurance was the use of Peer Review, adopted by the Institute in 2010. Teaching staff chose to use this model of professional review rather than the formal interview system because they feel more comfortable being assessed by their peers. To date this has proved extremely successful, with the comments and suggestions reflecting a high degree of professionalism.

With the legislative changes implemented in 2012, ICFP assumed sole responsibility for its courses with ACU providing assistance in the area of quality assurance to Margie Beck, who is now ICFP’s external person for this area. However, the general policies that had been set down for quality assurance over nearly a decade have continued and provide the Institute with the foundation for monitoring all of its future course offerings.

ICFP Staffing and Capacity Building

ICFP’s policy advocated that academic staff for its teacher education course were ideally to be from Timor-Leste, with lecturers having at least a Master-level qualification. Given the limited number of local people who had such academic qualifications or tertiary experience, the Institute had the task of educational capacity building not only of its students but initially its staff as well. The usual pattern was for Timorese academic staff to be first employed as tutors, over time these were often ICFP’s own graduates, who then had the opportunity to master teaching in a tertiary environment. The local staff could teach the students, using their own experiences as a basis for examples and illustrations of the concepts being taught. Initially however, many of the more senior academic staff were expatriates. Over time, more qualified Timorese were appointed to lecturer and tutor positions as well as to the administrative staff. An example of this consolidation and confidence building is that a Timorese lecturer, Aurea Tilman, after two years of working weekly with an Australian lecturer in two teaching units – Biblical Studies and History of Timor-Leste – assumed the role of lecturer-in-charge. She conducted her own research, including use of Indonesian websites, to augment her knowledge base. She developed the confidence and capacity to take on leadership in a way that would have been impossible to imagine eight years earlier, when she had enrolled in the first intake of primary students of the Institute.

At the same time, ICFP and its partners were committed to the professional development of all staff of the Institute to make them aware of their new roles in a tertiary culture. This focus was addressed through ACU staff, volunteers from Catholic Education offices, and members, staff and associates of the Marist Brothers. The processes included Timorese academic staff visiting institutions in Australia and Australian personnel offering professional development and mentoring in Baucau. Activities included Portuguese, language classes, lecturing, tutoring and teaching skills, and curriculum development. In addition, staff

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development opportunities were provided to the administrative support staff in their professional growth. Two members have completed courses through Queensland TAFE ‒ one in child-care and the other in office management. Another completed a Certificate Four course in Teaching and Assessment at TAFE that was offered in Dili. All of these activities contributed to staff professional confidence and institutional capacity building.

Academic staff members were also expected to improve their qualifications. At least four undertook units at Charles Darwin University (CDU) with three eventually graduating from ACU while the fourth completed his studies at CDU. However, the usual pattern has been for most staff to enrol in the ACU Master of Education programme. ACU’s commitment to this staff institutional capacity building was an integral part of the partnership and was the basis for the offering of Master of Educational Leadership and then the Master of Education to the staff of ICFP. ACU began offering the Master of Education from 2008 and continues to do so (see Table 5.2 ). Professor Peter Sheehan established a fund for covering 50 per cent of the students’ fees. The total funding of this staff capacity building has subsequently been addressed through AusAID and other grants. The number of academic staff studying the Master of Education, graduating and then staying with ICFP for at least 12 months is presented below.

Table 5.2. Staff enrolled in postgraduate courses

Year Number of M Ed students

enrolled

Number of students

graduating

Number who were members of ICFP 12

months later

2008 6 1 1 1 2009 9 2010 10 2011 5 5 3 2012 7 2 1 2013 8 3 3

The gender balance of candidates undertaking and graduating with a Master of Education is fairly evenly distributed, as can be seen in Table 5.3 .

Students usually took three or four years to complete a Master of Education. Although there were five graduates in 2011, three were still working at ICFP twelve months later. In 2012, two students graduated with a Master of Education and one was still at ICFP one year later. The percentage of 2013 graduates who were members of ICFP twelve months later was one hundred per cent. The figures in Table 5.2 indicate that the retention of academic staff once they had completed the Master of Education was a challenge for ICFP. These graduates, with their tertiary qualifications plus teaching and administrative experience, are much sought after in other sectors of the country. They usually find more financially attractive

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employment as public servants or with international NGOs and Aurea Tilman, mentioned earlier, has been one of these staff lost to the Institute in this way. A joint research project between two of the senior Timorese staff of ICFP and ACU staff was planned but could not be completed because of the resignation of these staff from ICFP to take up better job opportunities elsewhere. However, ICFP and its partners have accepted this and consider these moves to be part of their contribution to the capacity building of Timor-Leste as a new nation despite the loss of such staff capacity to the Institute.

In recent years, there has been a shift within Timor-Leste as the United Nations forces and international consulting companies have increasingly withdrawn from the country and local authorities and organisations have taken over their responsibilities. Sometimes this has been an easy transition but in other cases it has left the Timorese with the challenge of filling the gap. In contrast, ICFP approached the concept of Timorisation of its staff from the beginning with a long-term capacity building focus in mind. An example of this has been with Margie Beck who had been in a senior position as Deputy Director since 2004. The decision was made at the beginning of the 2012 academic year to appoint a Timorese Coordinator of the Bachelor of Teaching programme as the Deputy Director ‘in training’. The Australian Deputy Director worked on a daily basis with her Timorese colleague, designing a work manual, a calendar of when key events take place in the Institute, and the role that he must take, building up lines of communication between student administration staff and himself, and having regular meetings to explain and mentor his progress. At the beginning of 2013, the Timorese Deputy Director took up the role with minimal supervision and guidance. This has been a process of confidence building as well as skills building, because the Timorese staff member is academically qualified, and has had other work placements that have helped to prepare him for this position. By 2014, the overwhelming majority of the staff of ICFP is Timorese, some twenty-seven in number. At the time of writing, there were only three expatriates on staff, all Australians including two volunteers and the Director who is a Marist Brother.

Table 5.3. Number of Male and Female Master of Education Graduates

Year Number of M Ed Graduates

Number of male graduates

Number of female graduates

2008 1 1 1 2009 2010 2011 5 3 2 2012 2 2 2013 3 2 1

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Despite such changes, there have been other ways in which the partnership has continued and broadened its scope.

BROADENING THE SCOPE OF THE PARTNERSHIP

The partners have broadened the scope of their commitment over the years as new challenges and opportunities have presented themselves so that they have been committed to various ongoing activities that have gone well beyond the scope of the original aims of the partnership.

Marist Brothers

At the start of this partnership, there were the five Marist Brothers working within the then Catholic Teachers College and they focused upon teacher education. In 2014, the number of Marist Brothers that were involved in ICFP has been reduced to four, including Brother Fons. Education also continues as a priority with a focus now being given to supporting the education of young men who, as aspirants, had indicated their intention to pursue the appropriate formation for membership of the Congregation. The Brothers, with the endorsement of the Bishop, have made a commitment to developing Marist Brothers schools within the Diocese of Baucau.

The Marist Brothers established the Marcellin Champagnat Creche as further expression of their commitment to the education and wellbeing of people, particularly children of staff and students of ICFP. The establishment of the San Antonio Clinic in 2006 and their continuing support of it in partnership with ACU until 2013 were evidence of their commitment to the health of the people, particularly staff and students. Funding for this project came from the O’Neill Foundation, a member of which was working in St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill in Australia, a Marist school. In addition to improving the health and wellbeing of students and staff at ICFP as well as the wider community in Baucau, professional development in health was also provided to health workers through the clinic.

Australian Catholic University

ACU has extended its commitment to the people and Diocese of Baucau in two ways. The first has been through the development and implementation of the Future in Youth programme for the engagement of children and youth in soccer. ACU staff members, Dr Ross Smith and Dr Paul Callery, developed this programme in 2009 for implementation in 2010. ACU has continued to offer the programme with the support of local community organisations, the parishes, schools, and Football Federation Organisations within Timor-Leste and Australia. Each year ACU Exercise Science students spend three weeks working in Timor-Leste improving the soccer skills of young players and coaches. The presence of female ACU students has given

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local girls far greater confidence and role models for playing sport and engaging in exercise than in the past. More than 4300 young people have participated in the programme across the years to date as well as 225 coaches, 100 of which have returned from previous years. All participants receive a t-shirt, red cap and water bottle and are taught about fairness and respect to their opponents, as well as healthy eating and hygiene. If these lessons seem simple concepts, then previously some youths did not play soccer because they were afraid of violence on the field. Even the notion of shaking the hands of opposing players was not commonplace until introduced during the programme.

A second commitment of ACU has been in supporting the San Antonio clinic, which in 2014 was renamed Seven Eleven Farmacia. It employed an Australian-trained Timorese nurse to travel to Baucau for six months and provide professional development to health professionals in the Baucau district. ACU also provided financial support to the clinic and subsequently implement the Barefoot Nurses Train the Trainer programme for village health workers, hospital staff and other key health professionals in the community. This health education programme, led by Helen Peters, a registered nurse and Sister Monica Whelan lcm, aims to train health professionals, particularly village health workers, to act as a first point of contact for people in their area and to provide basic primary care to those in immediate need. The programme focuses on the provision of primary health care such as fractures, burns and cuts, as well as stomach and skin problems, infectious diseases and immunisation.

CONCLUSION

Evidence of the scope and impact of the partnership between ICFP, the Bishop and Diocese of Baucau, the Marist Brothers and ACU has been seen in the number and quality of ICFP students and graduates, the staffing of ICFP by Timorese and in the status and quality assurance of the courses offered by the Institute. The Marist Brothers and ACU broadened the scope of their commitment to the people and Church of Baucau through other major programmes including Marist aspirancy and formation programmes and ACU’s sport and health programmes. In the next chapter we will examine the respective roles and responsibilities in the partnership.

NOTE

1 Master of Educational Leadership graduate

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TRANSFORMING EDUCATION

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CHAPTER 6

DOMAINS AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN THE PARTNERSHIP

The previous two chapters have outlined the history and scope of the partnership and its long-standing development. This chapter employs a two-dimensional framework of domains and responsibilities to further analyse the workings of this educational capacity building partnership between ICFP and the Bishop of the Diocese of Baucau, the Marist Brothers and the Australian Catholic University. Four domains addressing the institution’s values, the central academic and infrastructure components of the capacity building, and the long-term sustainability of the institution were chosen for this analysis. Each of the four broad domains ‒ Foundational Values, Institutional Deliverables, Institutional Infrastructure and Institutional Sustainability ‒ include further sub-elements for analysis.

Three categories were also devised for allocating and analysing the responsibilities of each partner with respect to each element within the four domains. These categories reported upon a partner’s responsibility in terms of the nature and level of their accountability, contribution, and support. The three categories were:

• Principal ( P ): partner has a primary accountability for this area;• Collaborative ( C ): partner contributes values, capacity, opportunities, resources

or status; and• Supportive (S ): partner promotes the synergies between what it does and the work

of the partnership.

Analysis of the partnership in terms of domains and responsibilities reveals the multiple dimensions of the partnership in this educational capacity building enterprise. The complexities and nuances involved can be inferred from a study of its overall framework (see Table 6.1 ) as well as from the accounts of each domain.

It should also be noted that the complexity of the interfacing responsibilities of the partners was further complicated by their various accountabilities to other bodies and jurisdictions. In its work within Timor-Leste, ICFP has not only been responsible to the Bishop, as well as to the Marist Brothers and ACU but importantly to the government of Timor-Leste. The Marist Brothers have accountabilities to their Congregation within Australia and internationally, as well as to the Church as a whole. They also lead ICFP and so the responsibilities of the Order and the Institute can also overlap. ACU has responsibilities to the higher education sector and departments established by the Australian government, as well as to its partners in Timor-Leste. These extra responsibilities therefore add other dimensions to the workings of this partnership that are noted where relevant in this analysis.

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FOUNDATIONAL VALUES

Foundational values include the elements of vision, Catholic mission and identity, Marist charism, pastoral care, and tertiary education values and culture. A shared commitment to foundational values provided a base from which the four partners, all

Table 6.1. Domains and Partner Responsibilities

Domain Partner ICFP Bishop of the Diocese of Baucau

Marist Brothers

ACU

Foundational Values

Vision P P C CCatholic Mission and Identity P P P PMarist Charism C S P SPastoral Care P P P PValues and Culture of Tertiary Education

P S C P

Institutional DeliverablesAward Courses P C C PQuality Assurance P S C PTeacher Professional Development

P S C P

Scholarship and Research P S C PCommunity Engagement P P P PInstitutional InfrastructureCampus Building P P P CLibrary P S S CInformation Technology P S S CStudent Administration P S S PAdministrative Systems P S P SGovernance of Institution P P S SGovernance of Course Award P S S PInstitutional SustainabilityInstitutional Credibility P P P PStaff Capacity Building P S C PTimorisation of ICFP P C C CFinancial and Capital Resources P C C C

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from within the Catholic Church, could negotiate their respective responsibilities, and the different cultural contexts within which the partnership was to be implemented. This value base distinguishes this partnership from others that were also involved in post-conflict nation building in Timor-Leste but were based upon capacity to meet the task rather than upon shared values.

Vision

All of the partners are committed to the vision of ICFP. The Institute itself has ‘principal’ responsibility for the articulation and pursuit of its vision. However being a Catholic Institution in the Diocese of Baucau, the Bishop also has a ‘principal’ responsibility for endorsing ICFP’s vision and ensuring that the Institute was faithful to it. He has given it public support through his addresses and writings, as well as through his overt support and actions on behalf of the Institute.

ACU has a ‘collaborative’ responsibility for being faithful to ICFP’s Mission and is attentive to this in all aspects of its work with the Institute. In the early days of the Institute, prior to the commencement of the course, ACU personnel assisted in facilitating the articulation of ICFP’s vision statement. ACU, through the partnership, also brought a value commitment and enhanced status and credibility to ICFP’s Vision. The University’s Mission Statement expressed a synergy with ICFP’s original Mission Statement in “. . . a commitment to quality in teaching, research and service . . . bringing a distinctive spiritual perspective to the common tasks of education” and seeking “. . . to make a specific contribution to its local, national and international communities”. All of its endeavours, including its education, research and community engagement, are “. . . guided by a fundamental concern for justice and equity, and for the dignity of all human beings” (ACU, 1998).

The Marist Brothers have a collaborative responsibility in the articulation and ‘living out’ of ICFP’s vision. As sponsors, Directors and permanent staff of ICFP as well as volunteers that work for shorter periods, the Marist Brothers have brought to ICFP the richness of the charism of St Marcellin Champagnat and of the Congregation’s sustained commitment to and credibility in Catholic school and higher education.

The commitment of all four partners to ICFP’s vision provide an important shared base for their educational capacity building with staff and students and the Timorisation of ICFP itself. They have been ‘on the same page’ in terms of focus and priorities while having different areas of attention or responsibility within this shared educational endeavour.

Catholic Mission and Identity

From the outset, the Bishop provided the Institute with its Catholic identity and authority by his direct invitation to the Brothers to operate in his Diocese. He saw the Institute as contributing to the good of the nation through its educational endeavours. Each of the Institute’s partners, however, has also shared a principal responsibility in this contribution.

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ICFP has been responsible for the ways in which its Catholic identity and mission were expressed in its planning, policies, operation and everyday life. The Marist Brothers, with their involvement and extensive experience in Catholic higher education, have ensured that this educational enterprise in Catholic higher education was faithful to Catholic mission and identity. ACU with its understanding of the special nature of a Catholic tertiary institution and the inspiration of 2000 years of Catholic intellectual tradition enabled it to bring a distinctive perspective to the common tasks of Catholic higher education.

The partners therefore have brought to this domain their own rich heritage and expression of Catholic identity, values, history and desire for an outcome that would contribute to the provision of qualified teachers and highly motivated graduates. A good example of this mission in action was the commitment to enabling potential students from across Timor-Leste to apply for the teacher education course. This was based upon the shared belief that access to education could help overcome Timor-Leste’s history of disadvantage and exclusion.

Marist Charism

The presence and work of the Marist Brothers expressed the Marist charism that informed and guided the establishment of the Institute and the Brothers’ ongoing commitment and presence with the people, in the spirit of their founder, St Marcellin Champagnat. The charism of the Marist Brothers has been foundational to the Brothers’ engagement and commitment to capacity building. Their charism-based presence and work, like that of other religious congregations in Timor-Leste, has been a basis for the priority given to Timorisation. The ‘charism’ of a religious congregation is its distinctive spirit or quality. The Marist motto ‘a heart that knows no bounds’ continues to be foundational to the development and work of the Institute.

The Marist Brothers’ Congregation has principal responsibility for the Marist Charism. ICFP has a collaborative responsibility since it participates as an institute of higher education within the Marist Brothers’ Congregation. The Institute is attentive to how the staff and students of ICFP are offered formation and educational programmes in terms of the charism and how it relates to a person’s and an organisation’s thinking, attitudes and practice. The Bishop and ACU have “supportive” responsibilities. The University brings to the enterprise the synergies from the Marist congregation as one of the founding congregations of ACU as well as a member of the Public Company of ACU, and from the Brothers’ continuing association with the University.

Pastoral Care

Each of the four partners has a principal responsibility for the pastoral care and wellbeing of the ICFP community. Within their respective jurisdictions, each partner is responsible and accountable for ensuring that students and staff have been respected

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and receive access to student and staff support services, special consideration in academic matters, and financial support through scholarships.

Each partner has their special role in this important area and provides a sound basis for the care of students and staff. The importance of this pastoral care cannot be overestimated in light of the recent violent history in Timor-Leste and the particular needs of students coming from distant districts such as Oecusse.

Values and Culture of Tertiary Education

Both ICFP and ACU have had a principal responsibility for the development of the particular values and culture of tertiary education within the Institute. The original synergy between the structure, substance and emphases of the ACU and ICFP courses was important in providing an established academic base for the new Institute’s tertiary teaching and learning. The welcoming of the students to ICFP and their orientation to the courses and the requirements of tertiary education focussed their attention upon the academic nature of their decision to enrol as a tertiary student. ICFP and ACU were also committed to developing the Institute’s research culture that reinforced these tertiary values and culture in all its endeavours.

The Diocese has a supportive responsibility, through its provision of basic infrastructure and commitment to institutional quality and credibility. The Marist Brothers have a collaborative responsibility ensuring that the Marist Brothers’ appointed to this mission of the Congregation have suitable qualifications, capacity and status.

The coming together and blending of the commitments and interests of the partners has produced a quality Catholic tertiary teacher education institution. This institution focuses upon the education and formation of graduates “committed to teaching as a life-long vocation” and being “…good citizens…committed to spiritual and ethical values” (ICFP, 2006, p. 5). These graduates are also to be seen as being “highly competent in their chosen fields, ethical in their behaviour, with a developed critical habit of mind, an appreciation of the sacred in life, and a commitment to serving the common good” (ACU, 1998).

INSTITUTIONAL DELIVERABLES

Institutional deliverables consists of award courses, quality assurance, professional development, scholarship and research, and community engagement. Award courses and quality assurance includes the teaching of the courses. Within the initial focus of the work of the Institute, teaching took the form of professional development of teachers at school and village levels.

Award Courses

Within the jurisdiction of Timor-Leste ICFP has had the principal responsibility for the teacher education course offered. However, ACU also shared this principal

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responsibility in originally providing formal academic endorsement, support and credibility for the academic and professional offerings and awards of the Institute. Together, ICFP and ACU have delivered an internationally accredited award course by basing the development of the initial ICFP Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) course on the University’s primary teacher education course for Australian Indigenous students. The international status of the award was assured through re-accrediting the course in 2006 as one of the University’s courses and retrospectively registering its students as ACU students. The principal responsibility of ACU in this area was based in part upon its higher education accountabilities to the Australian government. The Bishop of Baucau and the Marist Brothers were the sponsoring Church organisations with a collaborative responsibility in the establishment and offering of courses supported by the values and status they brought to this aspect of the enterprise.

Quality Assurance

Both ICFP and ACU have had principal responsibilities for quality assurance. ICFP had to guarantee its procedures for satisfying the requirements of the Ministry of Education and Culture in Timor-Leste. ACU had similar responsibilities with respect to its offering of the Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) course off-shore as well as for the quality of this international community engagement. The University’s academic oversight and quality assurance procedures were applied in ICFP through the secondment of Margie Beck along with the short-term availability of other qualified personnel. This ensured that the awards of the Institute were of quality and value and negotiable in the wider national and international academic communities.

ACU also determined appropriate people for the moderation of unit assessment in conjunction with ICFP. In addition, senior staff from ACU met with staff, students, and members of the wider educational community as a further measure of quality assurance.

ACU, with ICFP, was committed not only to the provision of quality teacher education, but also to the granting of internationally recognised qualifications for the graduates of the course. The graduation ceremonies from 2006 until 2012 were structured so that all present were aware of the joint endorsement of the teacher education course by ACU and ICFP.

The Marist Brothers had a collaborative responsibility being kept informed of quality assurance processes as well as being attentive to the quality of course offerings and procedures in their own congregational review of ICFP. The Diocese has a supportive role as it acknowledged the importance of quality courses and outcomes for ICFP as a growing national tertiary institution.

Teacher Professional Development

Again ICFP and ACU have had principal responsibilities for professional development of teachers. ICFP made professional development the first component

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of its educational work in the country. ACU shared that responsibility through its Certificate of Teaching and Learning. The University made this course available to the Institute for in-country programmes at no cost. The Marist Brothers collaborated through endorsing professional development as an integral part of the educational offerings of the Institute. The Bishop was supportive in encouraging a professional development focus, seeing it as an essential need given the large number of untrained teachers in the schools after the vote of independence.

Scholarship and Research

ACU took the lead in having principal responsibility in fostering scholarship and research at ICFP and ensuring that this was included explicitly in the first Memorandum of Understanding. From the beginning of the partnership both ICFP and ACU emphasised the integral role of research and community engagement, with the latter area being a more explicit focus in the third MOU. Margie Beck has maintained a research focus throughout her first ten years as a seconded member of staff from ACU, documenting and publishing the development work within ICFP. She has subsequently continued her research as a volunteer and independent consultant at ICFP and an Honorary Fellow of ACU.

ICFP has also taken a principal responsibility for operating a centre of research into developing cultural and social aspects of Timorese life, and is supported in this work by the German NGO, Misereor. ICFP and ACU have also developed the research capacity of Institute staff through their study in the Master of Education with ICFP staff developing confidence to present their insights and knowledge in academic conferences.

The Marist Brothers have also been supportive of the focus on research, realising its vital importance in promoting scholarship in ICFP. The Bishop, while being a signatory to the MOU, did not focus explicitly upon the scholarship and research dimension of ICFP or upon research by ACU.

Community Engagement

ICFP has a principal responsibility in maintaining a key commitment to engagement with the communities, agencies, Church and government in Timor-Leste. This commitment includes Outreach Programmes with the local communities and the whole Diocese. ICFP’s commitment to engagement and outreach was seen in its early years through its work for the professional development of teachers in communities and schools across the nation. During its early years, ICFP also showed its commitment to the Catholic school system of the Diocese of Baucau by providing the opportunity in 2004 and again in the following year for “one staff member of the Catholic Education Office and one local Principal to spend three weeks in Australia to learn of the management systems that operate in one of the Catholic Education Offices” (Paul, 2004).

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ICFP’s community engagement has been particularly important in Timor-Leste because of its inclusiveness in focus and outreach. Cristiano da Costa, former ICFP lecturer and researcher, commented:

The Institute is one of the few higher education institutions in Timor-Leste that has been directly and indirectly involved in promoting peace in East Timor. It dares to venture where few do, to cross borders of gender and tribes, of political affiliations and class. (C. da Costa, personal communication, 2009)

The Marist Brothers have maintained a principal responsibility in community engagement through their whole mission to Timor-Leste and ICFP. The extent and depth of this commitment is seen in their allocation of Brothers to ICFP and the wider Baucau community, their regular visits to ICFP, their establishment of the San Antonio Health Clinic and their support of community programmes through Marist Asia-Pacific Solidarity (MAPS).

The Bishop has also had a principal responsibility in this community engagement. He invited the Marist Brothers, welcomed ACU and has continued his endorsement of the roles of the Marist Brothers and ACU throughout this partnership.

ACU’s principal responsibility for community engagement is integral to its identity and mission as a Catholic university. Its community engagement is based upon principles of reciprocity in which the partnership between ICFP and ACU provided a sharing of perspectives and expertise to find new ways forward:

Genuine engagement moves beyond the level of mere service and allows the opportunity for societal response to help redefine the nature of the problem itself and perhaps forge new solutions. (Sheehan, 2006, p. 5)

The University’s community engagement is seen in its commitment to engagement of ACU staff with ICFP, schools and communities and the extension of its community engagement beyond ICFP to the parishes and wider communities of Timor-Leste. Two major community engagement commitments by ACU have been in the areas of health through the Bare Foot Nurses Train the Trainer programme and the engagement of youth through sport by means of the Future in Youth programme.

INSTITUTIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE

The institutional infrastructure domain includes campus buildings, library, information technology, student administration, administrative systems, and governance of institution and governance of the award course.

Campus Buildings

ICFP and the Bishop have principal responsibility for the provision of appropriate campus buildings for teaching, administration, pastoral support, and research and community engagement. The Marist Brothers have had a principal responsibility

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regarding plant for ICFP, ensuring that adequate facilities were available for the mission of the Brothers in ICFP and using their international networks to access funds for the new building. ACU has had a collaborative responsibility in the form of status by giving public assurance that the campus buildings used for the teaching of ACU courses ‘off shore’ met requirements of the Australian government’s higher education policies. The University has also engaged with groups such as the eMerge Foundation whose fund raising in Australia has supported the ICFP’s building project as well as student scholarships.

The priority given to campus buildings and infrastructure, as well as to sound financial management, has been acknowledged from the early days of ICFP as contributing to quality teaching and student well-being. The high quality of ICFP’s facilities has been recognised by the Ministry of Education and Culture and by the national accrediting body.

Library

The library is a significant resource for learning, and its facilities continue to be developed for the use of staff and students. Library purchases have been made in Indonesia, Portugal, Australia, and more recently, in Timor-Leste.

ICFP has the principal responsibility for provision of these facilities and the library collection while ACU has a collaborative responsibility by assuring that the facility, infrastructure and provision of resources have met quality standards required for the offering of its courses. ACU has also been involved in the professional development of ICFP library staff and in providing advice regarding appropriate systems and procedures. ACU has provided funding and other support towards the library collection. The Marist Brothers and the Bishop have had supportive roles in this area. The outcomes of the commitment to ensuring a substantive library collection and appropriate services have been seen in the quality of the staff of the library and the extent of the collection.

Information Technology

ICFP, having principal responsibility for information technology infrastructure, gave priority to its development. During the early years of ICFP this priority was exercised in a context of unreliable internet access and town power supplies. Difficulties with internet access have continued for ICFP and other organisations in Baucau. ACU also has collaborative responsibility in this area of information technology because of its accountability to the Australian federal government for infrastructure available to Master’s students studying its courses. The University offered assistance to ICFP in this area. ACU’s Institute for Advancing Community Engagement assisted in the initial establishment, and hosting of ICFP’s website. ACU was not directly involved in provision of infrastructure or staff capacity building. The Marist Brothers and the Bishop have a supportive role in this area.

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Student Administration

ICFP and ACU had principal responsibility for student administration. ICFP ensured that the procedures were implemented according to public (including legislative) requirements in Timor-Leste. ACU was accountable for the provision of formal reports to the Australian government that include student enrolment, progression and graduation data. Systems were provided for students from ICFP to be enrolled in ACU through direct entry application.

Margie Beck had a substantive role in this joint responsibility through overseeing course and student administration policies and procedures, contributing to the capacity building of the professional staff, writing annual reports for ICFP and ACU, and developing the Handbook. During the establishment of the Institute, Margie ensured that there were clear and public regulations and procedures for student administration, and that they were aligned with those of ACU. She also worked with the Faculty of Education in making the student administration processes more efficient. Since 2012 ICFP has taken over most of the principal responsibilities for student administration. The Bishop and the Marist Brothers have always had supportive responsibility in this area, by requiring formal student administration systems that are easily managed by students.

Administrative Systems

ICFP and the Marist Brothers have had principal responsibility for the administrative systems, which include accounting, financial and general administration areas. It has been important to ICFP that money is properly spent and not wasted. Hence quite early in its history, financial systems were put in place and accounts were subject to annual audit. This development was achieved initially through ICFP’s partnership with the BDO accounting firm in Melbourne, and then with Deloitte after the merger of these two firms. The auditing of accounts is currently the responsibility of an accounting firm in Denpasar, Indonesia. The Marist Brothers have had a principal responsibility in financial oversight, with the help of their financial office in Melbourne. Rex Cambrey, from the Marist Brothers’ financial office, and Jeff Knott, from the accounting firms BDO and then Deloitte, worked together in the establishment and oversight of the financial systems. The Bishop and ACU have supportive roles in this area. During the first five years of the Institute’s history ACU worked closely with Jeff Knott, who was principal officer for this area with BDO and then Deloitte. This rigorous check of finances has been a characteristic of the Institute throughout its history.

Governance of the Institution

Governance is presented here in terms of the two major areas: governance of the institution and governance of the course awards. Governance of the institution

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includes the four domains of foundational values, institutional deliverables, infrastructure and sustainability, while governance of the course awards is primarily concerned with the deliverables of award courses and quality assurance. Governance of the institution and course awards has currently been addressed through individual responsibilities because there is no formal governance structure within ICFP.

The Bishop has ultimate authority in governance of the institution. He has principal responsibility because it is at his invitation that the Brothers lead, manage and administer the Institute, with responsibilities outlined in the 2003 formal agreement. While the Bishop is not directly involved in ICFP, he receives regular briefings from the Director and is kept informed about the activities of the Institute, its plans and issues it is addressing. As ‘owner’ of the Institute and in his responsibility as Bishop, he presides over the graduation Mass and ceremony.

ICFP with its primary accountability for institutional governance has principal responsibility in this area. Decision making authority of the Institute regarding policy issues resides in the Director, who is advised by an Executive comprising senior academic and administrative staffs, who are mainly Timorese. The Director reports, where appropriate, to the Bishop, the Provincial of the Marist Brothers and relevant authorities at ACU.

The Marist Brothers have a supportive role in institutional governance of ICFP. In Canon Law, which governs ecclesiastical matters, the presence of the Marist Brothers in the leadership, management and teaching at ICFP is seen as an ‘assigned’ work of the Brothers rather than as a ‘proper’ work. The distinction is that the presence and leadership of the Marist Brothers at the Institute is at the discretion of the Bishop rather than of their major superiors as part of their ministry. Should the Bishop decide at the end of the present agreement period to appoint a person other than a Marist Brother as Director of the Institute, the role of the Marist Brothers as partners would need to be redefined. ACU has always had a supportive role in the institutional governance compared to its earlier principal responsibility for governance of courses and awards.

Governance of the Awards

Both ICFP and ACU had principal responsibility for the academic governance of the Bachelor and Certificate courses and awards from 2003 to 2012. The Senate of ACU, acting on the recommendation of the Director of ICFP, conferred the academic awards. Certificates presented on the basis of professional development programmes were awarded on the authority of the Institute itself. Because of its principal responsibility for governance of awards, ACU, as reported above, has had principal responsibility for quality assurance. The Diocese and the Marist Brothers have had supportive roles in the governance of awards.

Because of new legislative requirements in Timor-Leste, ICFP from 2012 onwards now has a new form of principal responsibility for the academic governance. This change in academic structures occurred at the same time as ICFP became a ministry responsibility of the new Australian Province of the Marist Brothers.

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INSTITUTIONAL SUSTAINABILITY

Institutional sustainability encompasses institutional credibility, staff capacity building, the Timorisation of ICFP, and financial and capital resources. The future sustainability of ICFP has always been an important outcome for the partnership. The sustainability, as well as the development, of ICFP has benefited from the extent, breadth and depth of the financial and in-kind support that ICFP has received from partner organisations.

Institutional Credibility

Institutional credibility has been dependent upon the integrity in foundational values, quality in institutional deliverables, and appropriateness and effectiveness of institutional infrastructure. The partners had collective principal responsibilities within each of these domains for institutional credibility and the signing of MOUs and Statement of Agreements were public testimony to this fact.

The interdependence of the partners’ responsibilities in this area was clear from the original partnership between the Bishop and the Marist Brothers as outlined in the Statement of Agreement, from 2003 to 2011, and then renewed until 2015. This partnership between the Bishop and the Marists has been foundational to the credibility of ICFP as an institution of Catholic higher education. Similarly ICFP’s partnership with ACU brought academic rigour to the Institute’s credibility. ICFP, in having responsibility since 2012 for accrediting its own courses, continues to draw upon its partnership with ACU to assist with its ongoing institutional credibility with respect to its award courses in its new national and international situation.

The institutional credibility of ICFP has importance not only for itself and the other partners but also for Baucau and the higher education sector in Timor-Leste. ICFP gives status to the town and communities that host it and its students and graduates and, in turn their families and villages are proud of the academic and professional achievements of the Institute. The nation also benefits from having an Institution that now has international credibility.

Staff Capacity Building

There is a need for more Timorese people with appropriate qualifications and experience to move into academic and administrative positions. A key priority of the partnership has been the education of the Timorese people to assume such roles within ICFP. ICFP has a principal responsibility in this respect. The Institute is committed to ensure that those who are employed are given opportunities to improve their own level of education and capacity. ACU also has had a principal responsibility in this area because it is accountable for the quality of the postgraduate education course offered to staff.

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Developing the capacity of ICFP staff, therefore, has been an essential component of the partners’ commitment to quality teacher education for Timor-Leste. As indicated above, both ICFP and ACU have a principal responsibility in this area, with the Marist Brothers collaborating in this development. They have done this by offering Marist Brothers’ capacity to the postgraduate education of staff and by organising staff visits to Marist Brothers’ schools and facilities in Australia. The Bishop has a supportive role, endorsing the importance of staff capacity development for the future of ICFP.

Timorisation of ICFP

ICFP has a principal responsibility for the policy of Timorisation with the Bishop, the Marist Brothers and ACU having collaborative responsibilities. Timorisation involves ICFP becoming a truly Timorese Institute, expressing its own national culture, encouraging leadership by the Timorese people, and finding culturally appropriate ways forward in the capacity building of the organisation and its contribution to Church and national capacity building. This process of Timorisation of the Institute includes staff capacity building, giving priority to appropriate curricula within courses, providing quality assurance, and offering and delivering its own award courses. It also includes ensuring that institutional culture, structures and processes are driven from within and not from outside the country.

Timorisation is an essential focus of the partnership, particularly in light of the long history of the local people’s exclusion from formal positions of responsibility and their need to now reclaim their rightful place in the development of their nation. With respect to their dignity as people and to the principle of subsidiarity, the Timorese hold or are being prepared for key decision maker positions. The partnership is committed to ensuring that the Timorese people are not “passive recipients of the fruits of cunning development programs” (Sen, 1999, p. 53).

Financial and Capital Resources

The sourcing of ongoing funding for the day-to-day running and future operations of ICFP is a principal responsibility of ICFP and a constant pressure for the Director and management. In examining the collaborative role of the other partners with respect to the infrastructure of ICFP, it is important to understand the financial and in-kind contributions that ICFP receives.

The Diocese of Baucau has had an important collaborative responsibility in these matters as ICFP used Church land and buildings for its initial infrastructure. The endorsement by the Bishop of ICFP as a priority work of the Church has also given the Institute leverage in accessing international funds.

The Marist Brothers have had a collaborative role in this area. In addition to the involvement of volunteer personnel, including the Brothers, the Province provides a substantial annual recurrent grant to ICFP. Originally the Marist Brothers Province

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Office in Melbourne forwarded recurrent funds and donations to the Institute. Now these funds come to ICFP through Marist Asia-Pacific Solidarity (MAPS).

Australian Catholic University has had a collaborative role, assisting through the waiver of fees for the certificate and undergraduate courses and in the first instance subsidising 50% of the cost of the staff postgraduate study. It has also collaborated through the establishment of a scholarship fund and the engagement of ACU Foundation as a partner with other groups such as eMerge Foundation in Australia to raise funds for ICFP. The involvement of ACU academic and professional staff on a voluntary basis has also contributed to the capacity building of ICFP. The travel costs for these staff volunteers have been covered either by their organisational structures within the University or by donations from sympathetic outside bodies such as Rotary.

CONCLUSION

This educational capacity building partnership for Timor-Leste was both a shared and collective commitment: shared in terms of the responsibilities of each partner and collective in that the total enterprise has been an outcome of the joint commitment of the partners. Their commitment of personnel and resources to meet these responsibilities was integral to the impact of the partnership in educational capacity building.

The mapping of the responsibilities of the partners within each of the four domains (see Table 6.1 ) showed the importance of the partners’ having an appreciation of and respect for each other’s roles and responsibilities. The interweaving and interplay of these roles and responsibilities, including formal accountabilities, required the key people to be ‘boundary spanners’ (Miller, 2008) bridging worlds, cultures and jurisdictions.

Differences in perspectives, priorities and approaches were worked through in ways that were true to the foundational values, institutional deliverables, institutional infrastructure, and ensured institutional sustainability. In working through these differences each partner needed to be sensitive to the historical contexts of this educational capacity building as well as to the current contexts affecting the elements within each of the four domains. These included historical and educational contexts within Timor-Leste, the Australian and international contexts, as well as Church and cultural contexts.

Each partner has been appreciative of the invitation it received to join in this educational enterprise and of the welcome it received from the people, the government and the Church of Timor-Leste. Both the spirit of collaboration and the moral commitment of the partners were reflected in the words of Professor Peter Sheehan, ACU’s Vice-Chancellor during the establishment of ICFP.

I sense there is an urgent necessity to assist in the educational reconstruction of East Timor in whatever ways are possible, and Australian Catholic University

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is committed to supporting that process. As a Catholic University, my University has a special mission to use its expertise to assist in the training and education of those who are themselves committed to the values of sensitivity to justice, respect for the dignity of the person, sound ethics, and the characteristics of good citizenship. In turn, the task of helping East Timor assists ACU to respect and give expression to its regional conscience, which must be expressed personally, professionally, and collectively. (P. Sheehan, personal communication to staff, November, 2003)

The holistic, collaborative and long-term nature of this institutional capacity building was essential as Timor-Leste emerged from a long history of dependence and conflict. Many other post-independence partnerships were concerned specifically with the provision of particular goods or services, the reconstruction of schools and other facilities, or the development of infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and telecommunication destroyed in the conflict following the referendum for independence in 1999. The sustained collective commitment in this partnership addressed both the professional development of current teachers and ICFP’s nature, role, capacity and credibility as a sustainable Catholic teacher education institution. An evaluation of this partnership in terms of its approach to and impact upon transforming education in a post-conflict small state is reported in the following chapter.

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EVALUATING THE PARTNERSHIP

Having previously traced the history and the interactions and contributions of the various partners, this chapter provides an evaluation of the partnership in terms of its impact upon ICFP, its achieving international development principles, its fostering of Catholic identity and its contributions to Timor-Leste. It begins by examining how far there is evidence of ICFP emerging as a quality tertiary institution. The achievements of international development principles are then evaluated against the Paris Declaration and the Accra Accord. The evaluation further examines the implementation of principles of Catholic social teaching as an expression of the partnership’s Catholic identity and mission. Finally, the chapter discusses the partnership in terms of its achievements in educational capacity building in Timor-Leste as a post-conflict, small state.

ICFP AS A QUALITY TERTIARY INSTITUTION

The NAAAA Reports

A major piece of evidence for the development of ICFP as a quality tertiary institution can be found in the public domain. This comes from the government of Timor-Leste itself in two reports from the National Agency for Academic Assessment and Accreditation (NAAAA) that became ANAAA in 2012. NAAAA was established in 2006 and is a full-member of both the ASEAN Quality Assurance Network (AQAN) and the International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE). Evidence from both the 2011 and 2012 NAAAA reports are drawn upon, with 2011 being the first public review of ICFP by this assessment and accrediting agency.

In its 2011 report, NAAAA substantiated the creditable achievements of ICFP as a quality tertiary institution in terms of its mission, institutional deliverables, infrastructure, and future sustainability. It commented upon the appropriateness of ICFP’s mission for a higher education institution and found that its academic offerings are appropriate to this mission. In terms of courses ICFP’s offerings met the Minimum Curriculum Development criteria. NAAAA commented favourably upon the management team from an academic perspective and acknowledged the complexity of ICFP’s academic accountabilities, stating that: “The curriculum … conforms to quality requirements of the Ministry of Education of Timor-Leste, Australian Catholic University and the AUQA” (2011, p. 11).

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ICFP’s attention to staff and student quality was confirmed by NAAAA reporting that student selection processes were regarded as “stringent” and included both examination and interview (p. 14). In terms of lecturing, NAAAA reported that the staff “has a very good grasp of the basic ideas of pedagogy, curriculum, learning and assessment and most impressively has embedded all this within the Timorese environment” (2011 p. 6). NAAAA acknowledged how lecturers either have suitable academic qualifications or are in the process of studying for such qualifications. As part of its capacity building ICFP had also “proactively increased the proficiency of its staff in Portuguese” (NAAAA, 2011, p. 19).

With respect to institutional infrastructure, ICFP’s governing body and administrative management were assessed as being “appropriate, qualified and adequate” (p. 3). NAAAA reported that the learning resources including library, computer facilities and classrooms had met the standards and were adequate for the purpose. It was noted how teachers from local primary schools were able to use the library as a resource which was “well stocked, updated and managed” (p. 14). ICFP, with its “well organised administration processes”, “responsible accounting procedures” and “good management of the physical facilities” had met the property and financial planning requirements (p. 18).

In summary, the 2011 report indicated that ICFP had fully met the designated requirements and standards for institutional accreditation, including undergraduate educational programmes, educational and student support services, and administrative processes. The NAAAA report provided evidence in the public domain of the outcomes and transformations that have occurred in ICFP from its initial development through to its independence as a tertiary institution within the Timorese context.

The 2012 NAAAA report presented to ICFP further reinforces how ICFP has sustained a very high level of outcomes in terms of the four previously identified domains of foundational values, institutional deliverables, institutional infrastructure and institutional sustainability. It commented that ICFP’s “institutional mission is appropriate to higher education” and that the “academic offerings fit the institution into either the university, institute or academy classification” and “the academic program is in keeping with the institutional mission” (pp. 1-2) and “the content and programme outcomes are consistent with bachelor level training, and the credit units meet the minimum curriculum requirements set by the Commission” (p. 3).

The Panel commended ICFP on its approach to ensuring quality curriculum, teaching and assessment including the “use of external experts (Margie Beck) to develop a curriculum that is both locally relevant and internationally equivalent”. It also recommended that “ICFP’s lead should be followed by other HEIs to achieve quantum improvements in curriculum quality” (p. 12). The Panel further commended ICFP for “developing collegial ethos of self-review, reflection and improvements that all staff are engaged in” (p. 12) and also reported that ICFP’s

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“academic standards are robust” and that the “quality assurance practices are also well-entrenched” (p. 12).

With respect to governance of the institution, the Panel reported that the simple governance structure of the Director being accountable to the local Bishop and the Provincial of the Marist Brothers in Australia “has been very effective in the early stages of the Institute’s establishment” (p. 12). The assessment committee also found that ICFP “has a well-equipped and well managed library, good computer facilities linked to the Internet and classrooms are equipped with data projectors” (p. 3). With regard to institutional infrastructure and sustainability, the Panel noted: “construction is underway for a new building costing $1.4 million with expected occupation in 2013. This building will partially replace aging facilities and expand space for classes, staff rooms and also the library” (p. 3)

On the Timorisation of ICFP, the Panel reported that the plan “to gradually turn the management of the institute over to the qualified Timor-Leste staff…is working out well” (p. 12). It applauded the support given by ICFP to its academic staff to study the Master of Education at ACU via distance learning mode, which enabled the staff “to study the latest developments in educational methods to support further development of the bachelor of teaching programme” (p. 12).

Sometimes accreditation processes can be treated with a degree of scepticism but these positive reports from NAAAA need to be seen within the context of a very uneven higher education sector in Timor-Leste. In 2009 by the time NAAAA commenced its accreditation inspections, there were, on paper, some seventeen universities and higher education colleges within the country but at least three were not functioning at all. When the first accreditation process was begun only fourteen institutions made submissions and only seven of these immediately met accreditation standards. The positive reports regarding ICFP and the noticeable absence of any serious criticism of the Institute represented a solid endorsement of its operation and the leadership of its Director, Brother Fons van Rooij.

Course Demand and Impact

Another piece of evidence for the quality of ICFP has been the demand for student places. This has remained high, with demand exceeding available places each year (see Table 5.1 ). ICFP has continued to enrol at least 50 students a year since 2003 with 42 the lowest number of teachers graduating in any one year since 2006. The public credibility of ICFP was evidenced in it maintaining a high level of demand even with the opening of other institutions or organisations in Timor-Leste for the education of teachers.

The impact of the course and the quality of the applicants can be also seen in the high retention rates of students (90%), the number and high standard of the students who won scholarships, and the public acknowledgement within schools and communities of the quality of the graduates. In a nation where primary

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teachers are still often poorly trained, the Institute has stood out for the quality of its graduates.

Research and Scholarship

ICFP provides evidence of the Institute’s commitment to research and scholarship through the work of its staff. In 2008 Margie Beck co-edited a book, Rebuilding Education and Health in a Post-Conflict Transitional Nation: Case Studies from Timor-Leste and in 2006, she published a chapter, “Starting from the Beginning: Primary Teacher Education in East Timor”, in J. Earnest and D. Treagust’s Education Reform in Societies in Transition. In 2013, Margie Beck and Silvanio Araujo, one of the Timorese tutors, co-authored a chapter about School Leadership in Post-Conflict Societies edited by Simon Clarke and Tom O’Donoghue from University of Western Australia that was published by Routledge Press in New York.

Timor-Leste staff presented papers at conferences in Timor-Leste and Australia. ACU also presented papers at international conferences on the capacity building at ICFP. Mariano dos Santos, Nina Sidalia Maria de Oliveria, Domingas Belo and Diamantino de Assis have presented at a conference in Dili, Steps to the Future, sponsored by Charles Darwin University in October, 2012. ICFP staff also presented papers at conferences in Australia, including at the Sixth International Conference on Catholic Educational Leadership held in Sydney in 2013. Given that many staff have only recently acquired a Master’s degree, they have begun to assume a respectable record in conference presentations.

Investment in Timorisation

A central focus in the partnership has been the Timorisation of ICFP, which has required transformations in perceptions and realities of both the Timorese and the partners. These transformations have included the shift to management, leadership and teaching by Timor-Leste staff and from these being recipients of professional knowledge to being agents in their own learning and capacity building. The Timorese academic staff assumed key leadership roles including Deputy Director (Academic) and Academic Coordinator as well as providing the staffing for course delivery. The Timor-Leste professional staff also assumed major responsibilities in the institutional infrastructure including library, information technology, student administration and campus buildings and systems.

International Credibility

Finally, evidence suggests that ICFP has gained a high level of international credibility. As outlined in previous chapters the Institute began in modest ways in its early years. It was restricted in the teaching spaces available for instruction, a restriction exacerbated for a time when the main lecture hall was used by Internally

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Displaced Persons (IDPs) and their families because of the domestic upheavals during 2006. The power supply and information technology, as an example, were so erratic and limited in the early years that Margie Beck used a portable generator in her classroom to power a data projector when offering professional development courses.

Subsequently, a new building was planned and constructed which ensured ICFP had quality facilities of international standing. This new four storey building is testimony to the ever present commitment of the Marist Brothers, through the foundational work of Brother Mark Paul, the planning and oversighting by Brother Fons van Rooij and resourcing through Brother Allen Sherry of Marist Asia-Pacific Solidarity. Despite a worldwide economic downturn in 2008, the Institute succeeded in attracting a high level of overseas funding from Misereor, the eMerge Foundation in Australia, Marist Brothers networks and other Church organisations to assist in the development of this building programme.

Funding has also been allocated to student scholarships and living allowances, staff salaries, administrative expenses and equipment costs. The high standing of ICFP has provided a credible basis for donations to student scholarships granted to over 80 of the 150 teacher education students. These financial contributions are indicative of the growing belief in the international stature of ICFP.

The importance and quality of the work of the Marist Brothers in ICFP has been seen in their being one of the very few religious congregations that received a special mention in Acknowledging the Past, Shaping the Future (Field, 2008). This extensive report, which was commissioned by Caritas Australia about the Church’s contribution to development in Timor-Leste, referred to the Marist Brothers as a congregation that operated the “respected” college in Baucau (Field, 2008, p. 21). This assessment is also repeated by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) website. It has awarded ICFP development funding of $600 000 (mainly for scholarships and student fees) for the years 2012-2015. These assessments further suggest that the partnership has been effective in maximising the benefits and outcomes for the students, the Church and the nation, particularly in light of the 325 teacher education graduates by 2013, a retention rate of more than 90% each year, and its encouragement of lecturing staff to complete the Master’s degree.

PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The second lens for evaluating the partnership is that of meeting international development principles. This includes a review of the relationships in, and operation of, the partnership in terms of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005) and the Accra Agenda for Action (2008). The principles of the Paris Declaration included ownership, alignment, results and mutual accountability. Those of the Accra Agenda were predictability, in-country systems and conditionality.

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Ownership

ICFP has grown from a shared vision and commitment of the Bishop of Baucau and the Marist Brothers with the latter then inviting ACU to be a partner and guarantor of quality in what was initially the Catholic Teachers College, Baucau. The principle of ownership has included the partners deliberately investing in the Timorisation of ICFP and the gaining of Timorese community confidence and trust. As previously noted, the Institute has come to be regarded within Timor-Leste as a high quality institution producing capable and creative graduates. From the beginning of the partnership, the commitment of the Australian staff to earn local respect and trust, because they were aware they were ‘foreigners’, minimised the likelihood of the capacity building being seen as another ‘takeover’ of the Timorese by a foreign power. ICFP, and particularly the expatriate staff, have come to be seen as being there because of their commitment to the people of Timor-Leste and their future. Australians working in the Institute have been conscious that they bring their own history, experiences, and professional knowledge. However, despite this awareness, ICFP has been viewed, at times, as a ‘foreign’ tertiary institution because of its association with ACU, its leadership by the Marist Brothers, and because its management and administration was perceived as being based upon a model that was new and therefore ‘foreign’ to the country. It says something about the nature of the partnership that ICFP continued to develop and grow through involving the Timorese in the running of the Institute and gaining the respect and support of the people of Timor-Leste. The NAAAA Reports have all been positive in their assessments of the progress of Timorisation by the Institute.

Alignment

The alignment of the objectives of the partners with those of the nation and Church of Timor-Leste has been based upon mutual respect. Differences in language, culture, experience and expectations have been identified and addressed so that all groups feel comfortable with each other and can work together constructively for the greater good of the community. The partnership has achieved significant milestones in the alignment of objectives and outcomes. These have included commitment to professional development of teachers at local and regional level; development, offering and review of the teacher education course; graduation ceremonies for teachers, staff capacity building and postgraduate graduations; national accreditation of ICFP, ICFP ownership of courses, ICFP staff research and community engagement; and attention given to role of local staff in the management of the institute.

The principle of alignment has been reflected in the bringing together of two cultures and the development of appropriate administrative infrastructure and capacity. ICFP’s administrative systems were developed from, not controlled by, those from Australia. This required the bringing together or alignment of quite different administrative cultures, approaches and capacities. The partnership has

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focused upon this challenge through ensuring that proper procedures, including those for quality assurance, are in place, developing the capacity of the local staff and reviewing procedures in light of local contexts.

Results

The results in terms of foundational values and quality deliverables outlined above have given satisfaction to people involved in the partnerships. ICFP, through its collaboration with ACU and the Marist Brothers, is now playing an important role in primary education and preparing young people to take up the role of educating the children of Timor-Leste. Graduates from ICFP are now professionals who are currently teaching throughout the country either in schools or as trainers in other organisations. The partnership, through the commitment of all involved to their particular responsibilities in terms of the four domains of foundational values, institutional deliverables, institutional infrastructure and institutional sustainability has achieved a fundamental international development goal – to develop Timor-Leste through this educational capacity building.

The outcomes achieved in terms of Foundational Values and Quality Deliverables have been a focus for public acknowledgement at graduation ceremonies, at which the Timorisation of ICFP is celebrated in the graduation of ICFP staff with Master’s qualifications. This acknowledgement and celebration has been extended to include the wider community, including people in public or government roles.

Mutual Accountability

Mutual accountability has been an integral element of the partners meeting their accountabilities across jurisdictions. As the Diocese and people from Baucau have assumed increasing responsibility for and within ICFP, the reporting processes will need to continue to address this perspective of mutual accountability. This is an integral element of the development of accountability processes by the people and government of Timor-Leste for their own institutions. The international partners are able to inform these processes through research into internationally and culturally appropriate good practice.

In the context of mutual accountability, the partners were conscious that the four domains - foundational values, institutional deliverables, institutional infrastructure and institutional sustainability – would not be advanced at the same pace and with the same priority. At different times, one area of development took precedence over the others such as a central focus on institutional deliverables before giving priority to institutional infrastructure. What is certain in terms of mutual accountability, however, is that all these areas of development continued to be advanced conjointly, and that attention was given to what was necessary in both the short and longer term. It has taken more than ten years to achieve growth to this point, which has provided a sound basis for the Institute to attain an appropriate level of independent sustainability.

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Development of the capacity of the people of Timor-Leste, and particularly the staff of ICFP, has been essential for mutual accountability. All Institute staff, from the maintenance mechanics to the lecturers in charge of units, have been able to access courses that will develop their ability and capability in their particular roles. They have completed courses through TAFE in Australia and Master of Education degrees through Australian Catholic University. This outcome has been achieved because of the belief that the Institute has the responsibility to provide the highest qualified staff to educate future teachers. The allocation of funding, staff time and other resources to this capacity building has shown how strongly this value is held.

This evaluation of the partnership has shown how, from an international development perspective, the partnership has reflected the three principles of the Accra Agenda for Action (2008) that are concerned with the long-term nature of the collaboration and development and the priority given to in-country capacities and capacity building. The three principles are predictability, in-country systems and conditionality.

In terms of predictability ICFP was assured of long term support by the partners with a continuing focus on foundational values and institutional deliverables, priorities for institutional infrastructure giving continuing and increasing attention to Timorisation and the widening international partner base giving increasing assurance for institutional sustainability. In-country systems were given priority in addressing each of the domains with the systems developed drawing upon best practice internationally but with attention to local context and culture. In terms of conditionality the international partners were responsive to ICFP’s priorities and while being attentive to their responsibilities within their own jurisdictions pursued these with an overarching attentiveness to the local context, requirements and processes.

These principles articulate transformations for such nations in terms of the people being assisted in developing the capabilities for setting goals, identifying strategies and reporting outcomes. The principles also articulate transformations for the partners in terms of their roles in sharing responsibility for, and not determining the nature and outcomes of the development enterprise.

CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING

The evaluation further examines the implementation of principles of Catholic social teaching as an expression of the partnership’s Catholic identity and mission. This social teaching, which has been expressed in many Church documents, has been brought together as a set of ten major principles and associated challenges for international development by the Catholic Alliance for International Development (Davies et al., 2010). These ten principles focus upon respecting and promoting: the dignity of the human person; the common good; a preferential option for the poor; people’s rights and duties; participation of the people in the development

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programme; economic justice; solidarity with the people; stewardship of creation; the promotion of peace; and subsidiarity (Davies et al., 2010).

The dignity of the human person was an explicit basis for a holistic approach to the staff, students and wider community through a focus on health and engagement of youth through sport. The focus on the wider community through the nation wide selection of students and participation or employment of graduates showed a commitment to the common good. The whole initiative is grounded in a preferential option for the poor with priority being given to their right to education, health and wellbeing as well as their participation in capacity building and decision-making. Economic justice was addressed in the immediate term by employment of Timorese and in the longer term by the employment of graduates and a nation-wide commitment to the people being able to graduate from schools having received education to assist them in sustainable living and possible employment. The foundational values of the partnership included an institutional commitment to caring for each other in the community. The partners’ commitment to solidarity was evident in ICFP being a source of peace and stability, particularly in 2006 a significant time of unrest and conflict in the nation. The partners were always attentive to working within the regulatory framework of the government as well as exploring ways to work in partnership with government.

POST-CONFLICT SMALL STATE

An important question to be answered is in what ways and to what extent is this partnership contributing to Timor-Leste’s educational capacity building as a post-conflict small state? We know from the literature that education is central to the development of such nations. It was both timely and important that the initial focus of the partnership was on the professional development of the teachers in schools, the majority of whom were untrained. The problem of having a substantial number of untrained teachers as well as the learning by rote heritage from Portuguese and Indonesian times were addressed through the teachers college emphasising the role of learner as the principal agent in their learning. ICFP and its partners adopted an across-generational approach to capacity building in Timor-Leste. The professional development of teachers continued as a priority for ICFP even after the introduction of the internationally accredited undergraduate teacher education course. Hence, quality educational capacity building is being provided through both a pre-service course and professional development offerings. This across-generational approach to capacity building was very salient for Timor-Leste in its emergence from a history of conflict and colonialism and now continues to be extended by the partners to other domains such as health and engagement of youth through sport.

This educational capacity building has been sustainable and of high quality because of the long term and open-ended commitment of the in-country partners, the Bishop and ICFP, and the international partners, the Marist Brothers and ACU. The partners’ commitment to their responsibilities in terms of the four domains

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of foundational values, institutional deliverables, institutional infrastructure and institutional sustainability was also central to the impact of this partnership in this post-conflict small state. Making Timorisation integral to the project building meant that over time capacity building has always been led from within the country and is focussed upon the longer term capacity and sustainability of the institution. The partners have always asked what the situation is, what the priorities and needs are, what is being asked of them and how they could best advance this educational capacity building. The capacity building and commitment to Timorisation have also had an impact nationally as previous staff, now graduates from the Masters course, assume new roles and responsibilities in government and non-government organisations.

CONCLUSION

This evaluation of the partnership has focused upon evidence in terms of ICFP as a quality tertiary institution, principles of international development, Catholic social teaching as an indicator of Catholic identity and mission, and outcomes for a post-conflict small state. The evaluation has shown how ICFP and its partners have been committed to giving priority to the participation and capacity building of the people of Timor-Leste. The short- and longer-term goals of the partnership have been based upon the priorities of the government of Timor-Leste and the vision of the Church of Baucau. The four areas of development for ICFP, foundational values, quality deliverables, infrastructure and future sustainability, have been advanced through the development of its academic and professional capacity and the associated active promotion of the Timorisation of ICFP.

Goals and strategies were aligned with national requirements while the partners ensured that students graduate with an internationally accredited qualification. Increasing attention has been given by the partners to the acknowledgement and celebration within Timor-Leste and Australia of the results of the collaborative development. Stakeholders were attentive to being true to their own mission as Catholic institutions and also meeting the requirements of mutual accountabilities.

As the partnership continues into the future, the sustained commitment to the four principles of the Paris Declaration will continue to build upon the foundational values of ICFP and extend the scope of the quality of deliverables, including ICFP’s own courses. The partnership has provided a sound basis for further promoting the priority of leadership and governance in ICFP by the Timorese. ICFP, with the support of the partnership, was well positioned for assuming its education institutional independence in terms of both institution and course accreditation. The evidence presented in this chapter shows that ICFP had achieved beyond the standards required for these accreditations. In the final chapter we shall look at the general lessons that might be learned from such a partnership for international development.

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On the hillside overlooking much of Baucau, ICFP is currently completing a four-storey building as part of its main campus. Directly across the road a site is being negotiated for a possible future building of a similar size. These developments are a far cry from the small number of leased rooms in which the Catholic Teachers College commenced its operations more than a decade ago. ICFP is now a recognised institution in Timor-Leste granting its own degrees and applauded for the quality of its primary teacher graduates who are employed in both Catholic and government schools. Timorese now play a prominent role within the Institute’s teaching and research responsibilities. The local people have given the Institute support at public events and liturgies and at every student graduation enthusiastic parents and other relatives often travel long distances to participate in the ceremony. In Australia, the partnership has been able to widen its core of supporters for ICFP through fund raising functions as well as obtain the support of other European development organisations.

The current trends in education in Timor-Leste stand in contrast to the Portuguese colonial period when it was offered only to the elite. Education during the Indonesian occupation was certainly broader in its participation rates but focussed upon the priorities of the Indonesian government not the local people. With the vote for independence the small and post-conflict state faced the daunting task of establishing and staffing an educational system that was seen as crucial to its own future development. Ideally, it would encourage social cohesion, economic recovery and help repair the shattered society (World Bank, 2005, p. 27; Lowicki, 1999, p. 44.). The partnership described in this book was one part of adding in the capacity building of this system. The previous chapters have outlined the ways in which this partnership originated, how it developed and the benchmarks for its success to date. As the previous chapter has explained, this partnership can be seen as having fulfilled many of the guidelines set out by the Paris Declaration and Accra Accords for encouraging and making development aid more effective. From the Paris Declaration these include:

• Ownership . Timor-Leste, at the government and community level, now possesses a sense of ownership and pride over the presence and contributions of ICFP;

• Alignment . The international partners have always been willing to align their objectives behind those set by their Timorese partners and deliver assistance through local systems;

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• Results . The focus of the partnership was always upon the development of ICFP and its programmes and how the results could be measured;

• Mutual accountability . All four partners have been aware of and accountable for the developments at ICFP.

The Accra Agenda included:

• Predictability . The partners were willing to think in terms of longer term plans so that arrangements were made to make personnel and other resources available in a timely manner;

• In-country systems . Where practicable in-country systems were developed and used as a first option for aid delivery leading to an increasing Timorisation of ICFP;

• Conditionality . The partners eschewed prescriptive conditions about when and how their resources were spent in order to suit ICFP’s own development objectives.

The partnership certainly combined a wealth of experience in higher education, teacher education, resource management, church leadership and community engagement to initiate and support this development in Timor-Leste. It could also draw upon a wider international network, religious and secular, for further support. Aware that Timor-Leste faced difficulties of developing its education system given its limited financial resources, the lack of professional staff and the problems of creating equal opportunities for students often over remote geographical areas, the partnership attempted to address many of these issues over time (Bacchus, 2008; Peters, 2001, p. 45). In the last part of this chapter we need to look at what lessons were learnt for development aid, particularly in the educational field, in this small and post-conflict society.

SHARING A COMMON VISION

It is easy to point out that the partnership involved similar faith-based people and organisations: the Catholic Bishop of Baucau, the Marist Brothers, the Australian Catholic University and the Catholic based ICFP. They all supported the principles of Catholic social teaching and understood the importance of education as a means of transforming lives. They entered into this development programme at a time when UNTAET largely ignored the Catholic Church and its agencies in the post-conflict reconstruction period. Yet such faith-based institutions are often most trusted in developing nations and this was true for Timor-Leste given the role of the Catholic Church during the period of Indonesian control (Nayaran, 2000). However, holding such principles does not, in itself, mean that all partners in faith-based organisations will work well together or succeed in their aims. Nor does it mean that non-faith based agencies engaged in development partnerships have nothing to learn from this exercise. After all, even though they shared a similar faith, there were different

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cultural groups involved in the partnership, namely East Timorese and Australians and other Europeans who could be expected to have different ways of approaching the issues of development. What was important was that all the partners were on ‘the same page’ in terms of what they envisaged they wanted to achieve, namely develop a quality teacher education institute over time, even when they still had to work through the details of how they would do it. This common vision gave the partnership strength of purpose when there would be differences, on occasions, as they worked through this process. Any development partnership needs to be bound by a common vision amongst the parties involved in order to sustain it through periods of trial and stress. It also has to have a degree of flexibility and willingness to modify the vision over time and this is partly derived from all the partners respecting one another in the venture.

RESPECT FOR PARTNERS

While it was possibly easier for the partners to resolve differences because, broadly speaking, they shared the same vision, the way forward still needed to be negotiated with the views of all parties being respected. The problem of development agencies entering a project with their own agenda and assuming they know what is best for the local partners without consulting or understanding them has been well documented in the literature (Medenhall, 2008, p.152). Both the Marist Brothers and then ACU brought considerable expertise to the partnership and it would have been easy for them to have insisted upon taking the leading role in the project without due regard for their Timorese partners. This would have been disastrous for, as we have seen in the history of East Timor, it had been dominated by outside powers for centuries. Since independence the Timorese have taken pride in being able to shape their own future. There may have been occasions, when tensions arose when they thought the Australians were having too much control in the partnership. Nevertheless for it to have existed for so long, with relatively few major disagreements, also suggests that the parties were more engaged in a respect for the other’s point of view. One example will suffice. While the governance of ICFP was found by the 2012 NAAAA report to be simple but direct and adequate, it would be considered unsatisfactory by Australian higher education requirements. Australians would expect to have more formal structures in place and ACU could have pushed the Bishop and ICFP to provide these as part of its accreditation process. The issue was certainly raised but it chose not to push this point out of respect for the way local practices operated. The current ICFP structure is adequate at this point in time and it was not seen as an issue over which to threaten local sensitivities.

A LONG TERM AND EVOLVING COMMITMENT

Some foreign aid is obviously meant to be short term. A NGO arrives to build a bridge or road and hopefully consult the locals over it and iron out any problems.

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Within a short time they complete the project and leave having ticked the boxes that the bridge has not fallen down or the road subsided. The project is then declared a success. Other areas, however, are not so easy to have the boxes ticked in the short term. Education, as we have seen, is rated by experts as a long-term proposition and may need a very substantial commitment (Buckland, 2006, p.8). Although the partners came to the project without any given time lines, and produced formal Memoranda of Understandings each covering a limited number of years, there was an underlying assumption that the project would require long-term commitments. Five years is a reasonable time period for an aid programme but at the end of 2004 the whole project at ICFP was still very much in its infancy. To have dissolved the partnership at that stage would have meant not enough time had been devoted to institutional capacity building at ICFP. Indeed, the primary degree programme at that stage lacked any real recognition and in 2006 ACU went to great lengths to have it accredited and also recognised by the Australian government. The eventual success of the primary programme was clearly due to the partnership working within a long time frame. In one sense 2012 represented the end of an important stage of the partnership when the government of Timor-Leste decided that ICFP must stand alone in accrediting its own courses. ACU then turned over the primary course to the Institute but still remained committed to proving assistance with future course developments and other programmes. Even now there are issues still to be addressed. ICFP has become since 2012 the degree granting institution, but its graduates currently have lost the international recognition that the degree had previously achieved through ACU accreditation. This issue still needs to be resolved. There is also consideration of further course developments at ICFP that may involve nursing or health sciences. This will require more resourcing and commitments from the partners. Perhaps, in the end, the Institute might become part of a Catholic University in Timor-Leste but again that is both a question of future development and further long-term support that the partners, to date, always have been willing to accept. There is no sense that the Marist Brothers or ACU took the view in 2012 that the boxes could be ticked and they could move on to some other development programme.

It is also a truism that organisations per se do not run aid programmes but rather it is the key people working in these organisations that are responsible for much of its success or failures. In many NGOs or even government agencies such people may work on short-term performance contracts. The success of a particular programme may change with a change of personnel. In the case of this partnership it has been characterised by the long-term commitment and ongoing presence of key personnel. By 2014, for example, Bishop Basilio is still Bishop of Baucau, only two Marist Brothers have been Directors of ICFP over its history and Margie Beck, Jude Butcher and Tony d’Arbon still continue to work and support the project on behalf of ACU. This stability of personnel over nearly a decade and a half has given the partnership a sense of endurance and ongoing commitment.

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WORKING WITHIN CAPACITY

The original partnership between the Bishop and the Marist Brothers began on a modest scale with the creation of Catholic Teachers College. It had limited resources and concentrated initially upon a programme of in-service professional development for the large number of untrained teachers who were filling the gaps in the education system after the departure of the Indonesians. It then moved into the pre-service teaching area and established a link with ACU that gave it a primary programme and staff expertise and guidance. The infrastructure of the campus had to be built up slowly since it received no government funding and had limited financial support from abroad. As the previous chapter noted, the partners were conscious that the four domains – foundational values, institutional deliverables, institutional infrastructure and institutional sustainability – could not be advanced at the same pace and with the same priority. At different times, therefore, one area of development took precedence over the others. If it has been a slow progress, it has also been a steady and successful one in the training of students and academic staff to allow for the greater Timorisation of the project. To date more than three hundred students have graduated through ICFP but these numbers are not large considering the overall shortage of primary teachers in the country. It would have been tempting to have admitted a larger numbers of students even though the Institute would not have been able to handle them at an academic or pastoral care level. Rather than the Institute being able to handle friction between students from different regions, such a policy may have only exacerbated it. Other institutions such as the National University did attempt to admit large numbers of students in a short period of time and then struggled to cope with many students falling by the wayside.

Ten years ago if a four-story building had suddenly been provided in Baucau complete with a computer laboratory perhaps courtesy of a large foreign aid grant, the actual surrounding infrastructure would have struggled to cope with it. What was the point of a room filled of computers if the town’s power supply regularly failed? The project needed to be aware of the limitations as well as the opportunities that existed in the society in which it was based. This is not to suggest there was no vision for the future. The funds to build the current new campus building came from many sources drawn upon by the experience and background of the directors of the Institute itself and MAPS. They knew the right development agencies to approach in order to build for the future. The commitment within the partnership to developing the four domains of foundational values, institutional deliverables, institutional infrastructure and institutional sustainability over this longer term had to be a balance between future development planning and the realities of the situation as it unfolded in Timor-Leste. They could not be driven by overseas agendas.

ENSURING ONGOING CREDIBILITY AND QUALITY

The partnership from the beginning sought to establish academic credibility and ensure quality within its project. Initially, it met needs by offering professional

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development courses for untrained teachers right across the country. These courses gave CTC nationwide credibility before, as an Institute, it introduced an award course in pre-service primary teacher education that had the backing of ACU and was subsequently accredited by the university. As well it offered the Certificate of Teaching and Learning at school and district levels as an important commitment to the professional development of local teachers. This search for quality and credibility in its courses stands in contrast to a number of other recent educational colleges set up in Timor-Leste to offer courses in a range of areas usually with little by way of accreditation and often in ‘sandwich’ courses that rely upon a quick turnover of students. At first, some of these colleges impinged upon the demand for places at ICFP because they appeared to offer qualifications in shorter and less demanding time frames. However, over the past two years demand for places in the Institute’s primary programme has risen again as its response to this competition has been to emphasise the quality and credibility of its course. The government has also acknowledged this with many ICFP graduates now employed in its schools rather than simply in Catholic schools.

RECOGNISING BROADER DEVELOPMENT GOALS

From the beginning, the partnership has been involved in capacity building within the primary education system including at the tertiary level by educating Timorese staff to increasingly take control of ICFP. But the partnership soon struck the same problems endemic in many small and developing states. Once it assisted staff to obtain their high professional qualifications, they have often been quickly lured into better paying positions at other NGOs and government agencies who are desperate for such staff. For some aid projects, the loss of these staff members would be seen as a failure of the project aims. Certainly these losses have, in one sense, been an obvious disadvantage to ICFP and a setback in fostering the academic profile of the Institute. Nevertheless, since this is a long-term partnership and flexible in its scope, it has taken the view that its ultimate aim of capacity building is not simply for ICFP, but is also a commitment to the people of Timor-Leste. If it loses high quality staff to other parts of the country, it has nevertheless increased the capacity building of the nation as a whole. Therefore, it is willing to continue with the programmes of educating staff to at least the Masters level while recognising that it will not necessarily be able to retain them all in the face of better paid job offers because it will still be enhancing the nation’s educational profile. Accepting that an aid programme may need to think outside the box in terms of what it hopes to achieve is an important consideration in setting and pursuing development goals.

ENSURING LOCAL PARTICIPATION, RESPONSIBILITY AND SUPPORT

When the first Marist Brothers arrived at Baucau to commence working with the Bishop, they knew relatively little about Timorese society. Unlike some aid workers

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they were anxious to find out how the society worked. They quickly employed a number of locals to assist them to find their way and to understand something of the conditions in which they would be operating. Since that time there has been a constant policy of engaging with the population at different age groups and in various ways. At first untrained teachers were given professional development and certification and, where possible, older and experienced Timorese were employed on the staff of the Institute. The Certificate of Teaching and Learning gave further accreditation to older teachers within the system. From the beginning the Institute’s staff travelled to learning centres set up outside of Baucau in order to make access to study easier for these older teachers.

The Institute also consciously decided upon allowing younger school leavers into the new primary programme to provide teachers who had not been influenced by the older system. High performing graduates could then provide a possible pool of future ICFP staff. Great care and a lot of time and trouble were taken to ensure that these student intakes were drawn from all over the country. This fostered a sense of national unity but also was designed to overcome the social disadvantage of geographical remoteness that could hinder student access to higher education (Bacchus, 2008). The Institute ensured that poorer students could obtain their education by offering scholarships, largely funded from abroad, so that nearly half of the present student body is receiving financial support. All these decisions served the Institute well during the troubles of 2006, as the student body remained relatively untouched by the violence. Despite some fears that led the partners to consider evacuating expatriate staff, the campus itself was spared any of the destruction found in parts of Baucau and the rest of the country. Since that time, ICFP has encouraged the policy of Timorisation of ICFP staff, giving them increasing responsibilities while the partners play a supporting role. The Marist Brothers and ACU have also broadened the scope of their commitments to local participation over time by introducing health care, childcare and sports programmes that add other dimensions of support for the local population across various age groups.

Conclusion

Education has been recognised as an important factor in helping to overcome disadvantages among the people of developing nations. In the case of Timor-Leste, the after effects of its struggle for independence and the small size of the State left it with grave problems in providing educational capacity building in the years after 1999. In response, as we have seen, a partnership was developed between the Diocese of Baucau, the Marist Brothers in Australia, Australian Catholic University (ACU) and Instituto Católico para a Formação de Professores (ICFP) at Baucau to assist in meeting some of these problems.

At first, the goals of the partnership were modest and specific but over time these have broadened into ongoing and multi-varied co-operation between the partners. Inspired by Catholic social teaching and an awareness of development aid principles,

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the partnership has been able to draw upon a wider group of supporters both within Timor-Leste and from Australia and Europe in order to give the project a greater scope. With a commitment to the principles presented here, ICFP, and its partners, are well placed to continue to contribute to Timor-Leste’s future educational development.

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APPENDIX 1

List of Marist Brothers who have served in ICFP

Br Mark Paul 2000–2007Br Steven Bugg 2000–2003

Br Canute Sheehan 2000–2002Br Michael Herry 2001–2006

Br Manuel da Silva 2000–2003 (Portugal)Br Fons van Rooij 2006–2014

Br Tony Clarke 2008–2014Br John Horgan 2007–2013

Br Peter A. Walsh 2012–2014Br Lesio Heckler 2013–2014 (Brazil)

Other Brothers have visited for a short time to support the project.

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APPENDIX 2

List of Staff Employed at ICFP (at time of publication)

Br Fons van Rooij fms DirectorMariano dos Santos Deputy Director

StaffAdelaide Monterio da Cruz

Agata Moreira FreitasAvila Maria do Espirito Santo da Cruz

Bendita da CostaCrisogno Soares Freitas Pereira

Delson R. do CarmoDiamantino de Assis

Edviges Maria Cidalia de OliveraFrancisca Augusta da Costa Guterres

Gertrudes GusmãoHenriqueta Pereira

Jaquelina dos SantosJoão Mariano Helder de Deus

José Celestino da SilvaJoaquina Belo Freitas

Josefina Belo Pereira FreitasJuvinalia Antonia de Fatima Ribeiro

Joviana Antonia da CostaJustina Lopes

Manuel Belo da SilvaMauricio Egidio da Costa

Silvanio de Araujo

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Jude Butcher cfc, AM is the Director of the Institute for Advancing Community Engagement and Professor at Australian Catholic University with its Community Engagement agenda of “Beyond Today” through which the University focuses its community engagement nationally and internationally. His research and publications cover a number of related areas including community engagement, international development, teacher education, human rights and transformational partnerships. He has been involved in educational capacity building in Timor-Leste for twelve years.

Peter Bastian is an Honorary Professor at the Australian Catholic University. He is the author of several works including A Century of Celebration: RSL LifeCare, 1911–2011 (2011), Andrew Fisher: An Underestimated Man, (2009), John F. Kennedy and the Historians,(2008) and Bearing Any Burden: The Cold War Years,1945–1991, (2003). He has also previously served as editor of the Australasian Journal of American Studies (1986–1990, 2000–2006) and has received several university teaching awards.

Margie Beck has lived in Timor-Leste for the past 12 years. Originally a lecturer at Australian Catholic University, she was seconded to ICFP Baucau in 2003 and has seen the Institute develop from the very beginning. Her journey with the Institute has been filled with learning, teaching, sharing and developing lasting relationships with staff and students of the Institute. Currently, she is a self-employed volunteer, working Deputy Director-Quality Assurance at the Institute.

Tony d’Arbon is a Marist Brother and Emeritus Professor at Australian Catholic University. He has taught, researched, supervised and published in Educational Leadership with a particular focus on leadership succession in schools and educational systems. This has included study of educational leadership in remote indigenous areas of Australia. He has been involved with ICFP in a consultative role since 2002. More recently, he has been a tutor for the staff members of ICFP enrolled in the Master of Education at ACU.

Youssef Taouk is a Research Associate at the Institute for Advancing Community Engagement, Australian Catholic University. He co-ordinates international community engagement at ACU and travels to Timor-Leste regularly. He has had hands-on experience with the project outlined in this book as well as with other ACU projects in Timor-Leste. He also lectures in modern European history and has published a number of academic articles and research reports in community engagement and in history.