Truancy as high in NSW as Top End

ABORIGINAL attendance at scores of schools in NSW is nearly as poor as in remote Northern Territory communities.

ABORIGINAL attendance at scores of schools in NSW is nearly as poor as in remote Northern Territory communities.

Some 53 per cent of Aborigines -- 904 students in Years 7 to 10 at 61 schools -- missed 30 days or more in 2011.

In the primary school years, 21 per cent, or 535 students, missed 30 or more days.

The NSW figures -- published for the first time -- were taken from 12 communities identified by the NSW government as target areas for combating child abuse and neglect.

Of the total 1439 Aboriginal students who missed 30 or more days of school, 17 per cent had missed half the year.

The figures do not include students who had been suspended or were absent for legitimate reasons.

But school suspensions are also at record highs, with 41 per cent of Aboriginal students enrolled at the 61 NSW schools suspended in 2011.

The figures, published by the NSW Ombudsman, explode the myth that the indigenous school attendance crisis is largely confined to remote schools in the NT.

NT government figures for 2011 show an overall attendance rate of 58.4 per cent among indigenous students enrolled at very remote schools.

NSW has previously only published data that gives Aboriginal student attendance rates as a statewide figure, which in 2011 was 84 per cent, compared with 92 per cent for non-indigenous students.

But when data for the schools with the lowest indigenous attendance rates in the 12 target NSW communities were analysed by the Ombudsman, it was revealed several of those schools had figures similar to very remote schools in the NT, ranging from 56 to 69 per cent attendance.

The NSW government identified 12 vulnerable communities, in urban and regional NSW, as part of its Interagency Plan to Tackle Child Sexual Assault in Aboriginal Communities.

The plan ran from 2006 to 2011 and has been reviewed by the Ombudsman, with a final report published this week. The report showed that, although tens of millions of dollars had been poured into combating child sexual abuse in NSW, only limited progress had been achieved.

And despite laws in NSW that require, in most circumstances, schools to report to child protection authorities if a child has missed more than 30 days, authorities were not giving a high priority to investigations.

This was a concern given the strong links shown between school attendance and sexual abuse, the Ombudsman found.

A failure to attend school was also a risk factor for involvement with the juvenile justice system.