Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women's Parallel ...

Challenges in implementing Article 10We are concerned that educational outcomes for our children continue to be woefullyinadequate. In the words of one of our forum participants, Australian education systemsare ‘failing our children’.Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children have lower levels of access to educationfrom pre-school through to tertiary levels. Our children have lower levels of literacy andnumeracy, which affects everything they do in life. They attend school less for a varietyof social and economic reasons related to entrenched discrimination and disadvantage.Fewer Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students complete school when comparedwith other groups in Australia: our children are still only half (49%) as likely as non-Indigenous students to complete secondary school. 47 In most cases, we must send ourchildren to mainstream schools that do not adequately take account of our cultures andlanguages.Reading, writing and numeracy figuresAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students do less well at school than otherAustralian students. The Productivity Commission said:Three times as many Indigenous children fail to reach the minimum standards forreading, writing and numeracy in year 3. The gap gets worse in later years in school forreading and numeracy. Separate information is not available for girls and boys. 48As with many other statistics, the statistics on numeracy and literacy have beendisaggregated only by sex or race. As a result, we cannot find out the numeracy andliteracy achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander girls.School enrolment and attendanceSchool attendance among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students is still aserious concern and poses considerable barriers to achieving at school. There isevidence that school attendance by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children atprimary school level is already below that of non-Indigenous children and that this gapwidens progressively as the students move into secondary school. Gary Banks,Chairman of the Australian Government Productivity Commission, recently summarisedthe issue:For many years, it has been observed that rates of enrolment and attendance at schoolhave been low for Indigenous children. But there have been no nationally consistentdata available to verify or monitor this. So it is a step forward that this year’s[Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage Key Indicators 2009] Report has been able toinclude attendance data for the first time. These data confirm that attendance rates forIndigenous students are indeed lower than for other students, with the differenceswidening at high-level years. The differences, while significant — particularly in those47 Australian Bureau of Statistics, The Health and Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander Peoples 2008, (Canberra, 2008), Catalogue No 4704.0 , 7. (ABS Health and WelfareReport 2008)48 Australian Government Productivity Commission Steering Committee for the Review of GovernmentService Provision, Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage: Key Indicators 2009 Fact Sheet: Women,men and children (2009) (Productivity Commission 2009 Fact Sheet: Women, men and children),.3, .36