A Brief Overview

The majority of Indigenous students in Australia attend Government schools.

• In 2002, 87.5% of all Indigenous students attended Government schools.
• From 2001 to 2002, there was a 5.6% increase in Indigenous enrolments in Government schools.

In spite of some recent improvements, Indigenous students remain the most educationally disadvantaged group of students in Australia.

• The 'gaps' between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, across all indicators and all year levels are significant.
• The higher the grade progression, the more significant the 'gap'.

Some issues

Federal Government Funding

Federal Government funding of Indigenous programs has changed significantly for the 2005 – 2008 funding quadrennium.

• Instead of substantially increasing funds to meet the needs of remote area students, the Howard Government is redistributing funds from urban and rural students to those in remote areas;
• Indigenous students in TAFE cannot access bulk funding arrangements for tutorial assistance;
• Schools in urban centres with Indigenous enrolments that are less than 20 cannot access tutorial assistance for these students;
• Those students who are able to access tutorial assistance must fail the years 3, 5 & 7 tests prior to being able to access funding, meaning that students can be seven or eight years old prior to being able to access tutorial funding to assist them;
• Recurrent funding for schools in urban and rural centres has been frozen at 2004 levels, in spite of enrolment growth;
• The universally accessible Aboriginal Student Support and Parent Awareness (ASSPA) scheme has been replaced with a competitive, submission-based funding arrangement called the Parent School Partnership Initiative. Effectively this arrangement has abolished 3,811 ASSPA committees previously operating across Australia.

Access to schooling

Thousands of Indigenous students have no access to schooling whatsoever:

• In preschool, estimates of those missing out vary between 3000 – 4000 and 9500;
• In the secondary sector, estimates range from 3500 to perhaps 6000.

Indigenous educators

It is well established that Indigenous role models in schools have a positive impact on Indigenous students. In spite of this, there are still not enough Indigenous staff in Government schools, and their employment conditions are inadequate.

• Indigenous teachers are 0.8% of the total Government school teaching population when Indigenous students are 4.7% of all Government school enrolments;
• The employment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Workers is overly reliant on Commonwealth funding, resulting in many of these staff being engaged on short term contracts with minimal job security.

Indigenous studies for all teachers

Indigenous education is a stated priority area for all governments, yet the last comprehensive survey done on pre and in-service teacher education shows that programs for Indigenous studies were severely limited.

• only 13.7% of the 10 019 teachers surveyed indicated that they have received any training in this area;
• 5.6% had undertaken pre-service training;
• 1.9% had undertaken pre and in-service training;
• 8.1% had undertaken in-service training.

What needs to be done?

The Howard Government must:

• Substantially increase funds to Indigenous education, concentrating on the shortfalls in remote areas, rather than redistributing funds from disadvantaged Indigenous students in urban and rural areas;
• Ensure that Indigenous students at TAFE have the opportunity to access federally funded Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme arrangements;
• Ensure that students in their early and ongoing years of schooling have access to the federally funded Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme if required;
• Work with States and Territories to ensure that all Indigenous students have access to public education, particularly in the early childhood and post compulsory years;
• Develop priority programs to attract Indigenous students to teaching and work with States and Territories to ensure employment and retention strategies are in place;
• Improve the employment conditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education workers;
• Take a leadership role in ensuring that all teachers are able to access Indigenous studies as a component of their pre-service teacher education program.

References

Australian College of Education (2001) Teachers in Australian Schools – a report from the 1999 National Survey – Executive Summary, Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs, Canberra.

Australian Education Union Northern Territory Branch (2005) Submission to the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education Committee's Inquiry in to Indigenous Education Funding (from http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/eet_ctte/indigenoused/submissions/sub009.pdf accessed 25.02.05 11.54am)

DEET Northern Territory (2004)Future Directions for Secondary Education in the Northern Territory Department of Education, Employment and Training, Northern Territory Government, Darwin

DEST (2002) National Report to Parliament on Indigenous Education and Training 2001 Department of Education, Science and Training, Canberra

DEST (2003) National Report to Parliament on Indigenous Education and Training 2002 Department of Education, Science and Training, Canberra

Kronemann, M (2004) AEU Early Childhood Education Update on the Report on Government Services, 2004 (from www.aeufederal.org.au accessed 10.02.05 11.04am)