The escalating waves of alcohol-fuelled mayhem on the streets of Alice Springs can be explained, in part, by education authorities’ abandonment of the Indigenous underclass and their rejection of evidence-based theories of teaching, activist, lawyer and intellectual Noel Pearson says.

“It’s the kids of the underclass that I’m concerned about. The kids who are disadvantaged with every year we waste stuffing around and failing to see 50 years of evidence about what works in the teaching of reading and learning generally,” Mr Pearson told an education conference in Canberra on Monday.