Education plea to give Indigenous students a hand

Indigenous students start school already behind and fail to catch up, according to a new report.

Noel Pearson at the Centre for Independent Studies to discuss the issues with Indigenous education. John Feder/The Australian

The federal government has been urged to appoint an Indigenous Education Commissioner to urgently tackle the achievement gap, as new evidence highlights that already disadvantaged Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are failing to catch up throughout their schooling.

The role, flagged in a new research report by the Centre for Independent Studies, would be charged with overseeing state and territories’ efforts to boost Indigenous education outcomes, including setting and monitoring catch-up targets.

It is understood that Indigenous leader and education advocate Noel Pearson has privately endorsed the establishment of such a position.

According to the CIS report, Mind the Gap: Understanding the Indigenous Education Gap And How To Close It, there is little ­evidence that Australia’s Indigenous students are catching up to their non-Indigenous peers, despite commitments from successive governments on the issue.

“By and large, Indigenous students make similar progress at school to their non-Indigenous peers,” the report states.

“However, they are more likely to start behind them – especially, but not exclusively, in remote schools. While there are some ­isolated examples of catch-up of ­students in remote majority-Indigenous schools, this has not been systematically replicated.”

According to the author, CIS education research fellow Glenn Fahey, about 47 per cent of the student achievement gap by year 3 was explained by differences in student and home factors.

He said differences across most school-level factors – such as remoteness, size, sector, funding, and staffing ratios – made little ­difference in explaining student achievement gaps, despite Indigenous students attracting about 38 per cent more public funding per student each year.

Mr Fahey said closing the attendance gap alone was the single greatest factor in closing the achievement gap – responsible for about 15 per cent of the gap.

Only about 36 per cent of Indigenous secondary school students attend school for every nine in 10 days, compared to about 66 per cent of non-Indigenous students.

“While some schools are recording consistently high attendance, there is little focus on sharing successful strategies,” Mr Fahey said.

Mr Fahey said a new Indigenous Education Commissioner would be similar to the recently proposed Regional Education Commissioner and report directly to the federal education minister.

Responsibilities could include investigating the efficacy of initiatives operating in majority-Indigenous schools, overseeing the scale-up of evidence-backed initiatives, negotiating system catch-up targets and monitoring pro­gress, and monitoring the allo­cation of existing funding.

Mr Pearson was unavailable for comment but he has called for a concerted effort to boost Indigenous students’ achievements, arguing significant improvements can be achieved rapidly with evidence-backed teaching methods.