The paper will address three fundamentals of learning for each young person in settings where external investment has been provided to fund the learning process:
· What must be learned (curriculum)
· How is it learned (teaching or pedagogy)
· How do we know it has been learned (testing and assessment)?

Learning how to function successfully in both the Indigenous and the wider Australian society is critical. How can these two halves become one whole? Whether effective learning occurs depends on the quality and nature of the teaching, the active support of the family, and the opportunity for the learned skills to be used outside of school. There has to be an acceptance of the way schools operate and a set of behaviours agreed to be acceptable in the place where formal learning occurs: the school. What sort of schools must we have? Learning to speak and write English, learning how to quantify, and learning how to work are all essential. How do we assess where each individual has reached, and how do we use the assessment to be reassured that each young person from the Desert can perform as well as young people who live elsewhere?