Make Indigenous Poverty History - Australian Goal 2: Achieve Universal Education

Target 3: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of schooling

• Indicator 6: Net enrolment ratio in primary and secondary education. 
  
  
• Indicator 7: Literacy rate of Indigenous Peoples at all ages is equal to that of non – Indigenous people.   
  
  
• Indicator 8: Increase the year 12 retention rate to the same level as non – Indigenous people.

AUSTRALIA

People who attain a year 12 qualification are more likely to continue their involvement in further education and have better employment prospects.

There have been gradual improvements in school attendance rates for Indigenous People; however the levels remain lower than for the non – Indigenous population. According to a recent report released by the ABS and AIHW this is due in part to:

• Chronic health problems experienced by Indigenous students
• Lack of access to educational institutions
• Financial constraints
• Social, cultural and language barriers (ABS AIHW 2005)

In 2003, national school participation rates for Indigenous children five to eight years old were 87 per cent, compared to 93 percent for non indigenous children (HREOC).

The apparent retention rate for Indigenous full – time students in 2004 from Year 7/8 to Year 10 was 86 % for non –Indigenous students it’s 98.5 % a difference of 12.1 %. This has improved since 1996 when the difference was 21.5 % (ABS AIHW 2005).

For Year 12 the apparent retention rate in 2004 was 40 % compared to 77 % for non – Indigenous students. Again the difference has improved since 1994 from 43 % to 37 %. (ABS AIHW 2005).

In 2002 Year 3 Indigenous students had significantly lower reading, writing and numeracy achievements than year 3 students overall. By Year 5 this had worsened – see ABS/AIHW page 19 for details of benchmarking statistics).

RESOURCES

Mapping Indigenous Education Participation. Biddle, N, Hunter, B.H, Schwab, R.G. Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, ANU, Discussion paper 267/2004. http://www.anu.edu.au/caepr/

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