Zubrick et al (2006, p.48) state that “in pre‐school years, there are lower proportions of Aboriginal children enrolled when compared with non‐Aboriginal children” and that Aboriginal pre‐school attendance at that time was approximately 88.8 per cent. It is not clear whether this figure is attributable across all of Australia, or just in Western Australia. However, a briefing paper for the Australian Education Union (Kronemann, 2007, p.6) suggests that “analysis of data from the National Report to Parliament on Indigenous Education and Training 2004 indicates that an estimated 56.4% of 4‐5 year old Indigenous children attend preschool, compared to the general preschool participation rate of 83.4%”. Kronemann (2007) further cites census data for each individual state or territory which estimates that in Western Australia, pre‐school enrolments for Aboriginal children were 1,387 out of a total 3 and 4 year old Indigenous population of 2,830, making participation rates 49 per cent. The same set of data report Indigenous participation rates across the
country to range between 32 per cent (Tasmania) and 60 per cent (ACT). Walker (2004) reports that participation in Kindergarten programs for all children in Western Australia in 2002‐3 was 71.7 per cent. Both Kronemann (2007) and Walker (2004) have commented on the difficulty of obtaining accurate data for pre‐school participation, due to inconsistent reporting procedures and measures across various states and systems.
Historical perspectives
Historically, the relationship between Aboriginal people and the formal schooling system has not been a good one, or one that has served Aboriginal people well. Beresford (2012, p.85) states that “poor [educational] provision for Aboriginal children has resulted in generations of uneducated, or partly educated, Aboriginal people.” The first Aboriginal school in Australia was established as early as 1814. The earliest education for Aboriginal people was established to “civilise” them and convert them to Christianity, and the first unsuccessful attempts were later taken up by missionaries, some of whom began the practice of forcibly removing young children from their families (Beresford, 2012). Fuelled by theories of social Darwinism, the prevailing view was that Aboriginal people were somehow inferior, destined only for occupations such as domestic service and unskilled labour, and could not be educated beyond the equivalent of around year three (Beresford, 2012; Price, 2012).
Periods of protection, followed by segregation and later assimilation all responded to four forces identified by Beresford (2012), and conspired to limit access to educational provision for Aboriginal people. The forces identified by Beresford were first, fear that Aboriginal people would intermarry with white people and that there would then be an increasing population of people with mixed descent; second, theories about the racial inferiority of Aboriginal people which justified limited access to education; third, community views about the morals and hygiene of Aboriginal people (which were a result of being confined to inadequate housing on reserves) which warranted their segregation. The fourth force was the official policy to eventually assimilate the Aboriginal population into the broader Australian community, meaning that in order to have any rights, Aboriginal people were forced to disassociate themselves from their own culture and live in the same way as white people. As part of this goal of assimilation, the practice of forcibly removing children from their families continued, and many children were sent to missions, where they endured harsh treatment and received little education.
The legacy of the Stolen Generation remains for most families. For many, schools and their representatives are still seen as representative of the “authorities” and are still
viewed with mistrust. Even after the 1970s, when governments began to take some responsibility and Aboriginal children had access to mainstream education, they were still subject to covert racism and teachers’ low expectations. Still today, schools mostly operate around Anglo‐centric ideas and ways of thinking, which are so commonplace that they are accepted as normal and not questioned, but which can serve to alienate others who have not been socialised into such practices. Attendance
Collins (1999, p. 19) states that “Poor attendance at school, for whatever reason, remains the most significant direct cause of poor learning”. In their study of 2737 school age children in Western Australia, Zubrick et. al. (1997, p. 27) suggest that students with nine or more days (18 half‐days or 20 per cent of the school year) unexplained absence from school would be at “educational risk”; that is, they were more likely (3:1) to be performing at below age level in academic performance than those who had lower levels of absence. The implication from this benchmark is that children who missed less than this amount of school would be able to catch up with missed content fairly readily. More recently, however, modelling carried out by Hancock et al (2013) suggests that there is no “safe” threshold and that “average academic achievement on NAPLAN tests declined with any absence from school and continued to decline as absence rates increased” (p. 251). In other words, reduced learning correlates with the extent of the non‐attendance.
Hancock et al’s (2013) study also showed that children’s attendance patterns become established early in their school career and tend to remain relatively stable across the years of primary school, with a tendency for certain groups of students’ attendance patterns to reduce markedly during the secondary years. Hancock et al (2013) also concluded that student‐related factors such as mobility and Aboriginality, together with socio‐economic factors, were strongly associated with attendance patterns.
Zubrick et al (2006) found that Aboriginal children were more likely to attend school regularly if they had attended pre‐school or kindergarten, or had spent some time in day care. Although surprisingly, health generally was not a correlating factor, children were more likely to be absent from school if they experienced difficulty in getting sufficient sleep. Other health factors did not appear to have an impact.
Carer‐related factors that appeared to correlate with children’s lower attendance at school included their carer having been forcibly removed from their family as a child, their carer having a limiting medical condition, having lower levels of education, being unemployed or at some time having been in trouble with the police (Zubrick et al, 2006).