Establishing Your RAP Working Group - FAQs

RAP Working Groups are usually members of an educational community who are willing to drive the RAP development/implementation journey. 

While it is important to foster all-staff and whole-school/whole-service engagement with your RAP (remembering that reconciliation is everyone’s business, and for everyone’s benefit), a RAP Working Group supports your educational community’s coordination, administration and monitoring of its RAP commitments. This fosters institutional integrity, sustainability and accountability in your RAP journey.

A diverse RAP Working Group will ensure the responsibility for developing, implementing and maintaining the RAP does not sit with one person, or be the sole responsibility of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives. A collaborative approach will ensure your RAP incorporates diverse perspectives, and represents the diversity of your educational community in empowering and sustainable ways. 

The RAP Working Group should include: 

• Members of the local Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander community (build relationships with community prior to asking community members to contribute to reconciliation activities in your school or early learning service). 
• The Principal/Director (who will ensure executive-level support, and will need to approve the RAP via the Narragunnawali platform). 
• Teachers and educators. 
• Parents/carers and wider family and community representatives.  

It is also suggested that the RAP Working Group includes: 

• Curriculum or faculty leaders. 
• Non-teaching staff (e.g. library staff, counsellors, administrative staff, groundsmen). 
• Students and children. 

A RAP Working Group requires a Chair (or Co-Chairs). The roles of the Chair(s) should be agreed to by the wider RAP Working Group, but suggestions include: 

•    Leading the organisation of RAP Working Group meetings 
•    Being the key contact for RAP-related communications 
•    Being the champion for the RAP in the school or early learning service 
 
All RAP Working Group members can dynamically engage with the RAP development process within the Narragunnawali platform (such as adding and editing Action-aligned Deliverables). However, there are certain aspects of the RAP development process which, for version control reasons, only those listed as a “Chair” can add, edit or save. For example, only those listed as a Chair can: 

•    Add and edit RAP Working Group memberships 
•    Save and edit responses to the Reflection Survey 
•    Save and edit the Vision for Reconciliation text 
•    Add/remove RAP Actions, and set Goals against RAP Actions 
•    Submit the RAP to Principal/Director to review and approve 
 
The Principal/Director will automatically be given “Chair” status, although you can have multiple Chairs on a single RAP Working Group.     

The Principal/Director will automatically be given “Chair” status. Once the RAP’s set up circle reaches 100%, the Principal/Director is also the only RAP Working Group member who can press the “Approve RAP” button from within the "Your RAP" tab, which will send the RAP onwards to Reconciliation Australia for final review/publication.

Before joining one or more RAP Working Groups, it is important to sign up to the Narragunnawali platform using your personal/unique email address. It is then possible for a single Narragunnawali User account to be attached to multiple RAP Working Groups. You might, for example, be employed as a Teacher at one school (and represented on that school’s RAP Working Group accordingly), and be a parent of a child enrolled at an early learning service, and be on that service’s RAP Working Group too. 

You can also use your existing individual Narragunnawali account to join new/additional RAP Working Groups even after being removed from a previous RAP Working Group. 

Although non-mandatory, you can also use the 'Contributors' section within the RAP Working Group page to add the names of community members, staff, parents or students who are not on the RAP Working Group but who you would like to acknowledge as having made an important contribution to the development of the RAP. These individuals can’t access the RAP via the Narragunnawali platform in the way that formal RAP Working Group members can. However, as the names of contributors will appear in your RAP document, please seek permission before adding them. 

Contact us: narragunnawali.org.au/contact-us