Better schooling, not uni quotas

LARISSA Behrendt's recent report recommends doubling the proportion of indigenous students at universities. Only 1.09 per cent of university students are indigenous and Behrendt argues that the target should be 2.2 per cent to match the indigenous share of the working-age population.

But the focus should not be on achieving targets. Instead, government should improve education standards in remote and underperforming "residual" schools in low socioeconomic areas. As Marcia Langton said recently, treating Aboriginal children differently to other students and modifying curriculums to make lessons culturally sensitive "is just a bunch of racist codswallop".

Likewise, universities should not be encouraged to increase the number of indigenous students by lowering standards through enabling or sub-degree courses. This sends the wrong message.

Already just 40 per cent of enrolled indigenous students complete their degrees (compared with 70 per cent of non-indigenous students). We should not lower the bar further so more indigenous students experience such failure. What we need to do is ensure that the primary and secondary schools indigenous students attend teach them to read, write and count.

In remote communities where there are no proper high schools, students may graduate, but this just means they attended school to Year 12, not that they received their HSC (or equivalent). Students who show promise are usually sent to boarding schools. Gary Johns argues this is the right approach but this means the standards are very low for those who remain behind. Only a privileged few receive a decent education.

Conversely, 80 per cent of Aboriginal students who attend mainstream schools pass the NAPLAN, and increasing numbers go on to higher education. This indicates the poor educational outcomes of some indigenous students are not because of their ethnicity but because the schools they attend are failing to teach them properly.

Initiatives such as Noel Pearson's Family Responsibilities Commission show that when parents are given the right support they can take more responsibility for their children's education.

Across the four Cape York communities taking part in the trial, parents have voluntarily paid about $1.5 million into individual education funds towards their children's education.

Pearson's "direct instruction" academies have also shown that children can learn when given the right instruction. Attendance at the Cape York Aboriginal Australian Academy in Aurukun is up from about 38 per cent in 2009 to about 70 per cent, a majority of students approaching or exceeding national benchmarks.

Other regions are considering adopting Pearson's welfare reform model. Halls Creek in Western Australia is the proposed site for a trial of the Living Change policy that rewards parents who send their children to school and comply with community-agreed social norms. As a Halls Creek grandmother said recently in The Australian: "These families have a lot of opportunities . . . but they can't embrace them unless they get a better education."

Sara Hudson is a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.