Current issues in Aboriginal Education

This section will outline the continuing challenges experienced by Aboriginal students.

The presence of particular system elements and prescribed system outcomes related to work, wealth, critical thinking, personal agency and control as well as democracy and belonging to the nation, frame the indicators and therefore the rhetoric of educational advantage. The absence of these system elements and outcomes is therefore reflected in the discourse of disadvantage. (Guenther et al., 2013, p. 107, emphasis in original)

Although Aboriginal people are twelve times more likely than non-Aboriginal people to live in remote or very remote areas (ABS, 2014b), approximately three-quarters of their total population resides in urban areas. For students, this means 60% live in major cities or inner regional areas while approximately 20% grow up in remote places (Hyde et al., 2017). The mobility of Aboriginal

students, although necessary to maintain strong ties to family, culture and place, particularly for those attending school outside of their community, can contribute to inequitable educational outcomes (Prout & Hill, 2012).

Following the 2013 census, only 55% of Aboriginal students remained in school to Year 12 compared to 83% of non-Aboriginal students (ABS, 2014a). Between 2012–2014, 43% of Aboriginal people reported having attained Year 12 or equivalent, contrasted with 70% of non-Aboriginal people. Only 6% of Aboriginal people held a Bachelor’s degree or above, compared with 26% of the total non- Aboriginal population (Andersen & Walter, 2017). In 2020, although the gap in Year 12 attainment rates appeared statistically on track to be halved, between 2012-13 and 2018-19 the gap widened in all areas except in major cities (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2020a, p. 60).

National efforts to increase school attendance, promote engagement and improve Year 12 attainment in areas beyond major city limits have fallen short of targets set by the Council of Australian

Governments (COAG) Closing the Gap framework (ACARA, 2019). Although Closing the Gap will be further discussed, other high-profile initiatives to improve school attendance and community engagement have met with mixed success. For example:

• the longitudinal study, On Track, recorded the post-school destinations of Victorian school leavers and while, at its conclusion, all participants were meaningfully engaged in study, work or apprenticeships, Aboriginal students did not complete Year 12 at rates comparable to their non-Aboriginal peers (Australian Council for Educational Research [ACER], 2014); • the Cape York Aboriginal Australian Initiative (ACER, 2013) was evaluated for its

performance but many reported improvements could not be quantified due to missing data; • the Stronger Smarter Institute (Sarra, 2012) received $16m of funding from the Australian

Government and earned negative press along the way for labelling remote communities as the place to “tuck away your white trash” teachers (Sarra, 2012, p. 304); and,

• five Aboriginal Language and Culture Nests in New South Wales (Halsey, 2018) were established with a base school, tutors to promote Aboriginal languages in surrounding communities and provision of employment pathways.

While positive connections between schools and communities occurred in these projects, and

attendance and other measures of achievement somewhat improved, as with most attempts to decrease the cycle of disadvantage experienced by Aboriginal students, the bigger picture requires greater degrees of success.

The Melbourne Declaration followed the Adelaide and Hobart Declarations (Education Council, 2014; Hughes & Hughes, 2012, p. 22) on setting broad-brush academic goals for Australian students, with specific equity and educational targets set for Aboriginal students. These initiatives still reflected the inherent systemic inequity and discrimination in education and the unwillingness of successive Australian Governments to find workable, lasting solutions to complex problems. In 2008, the

Australian Government under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd reduced the Aboriginal Education target “from ‘fix the problem in four years’ to ‘fix half the problem in 10 years’” (Hughes & Hughes, 2012, p. 22).

As the cultural composition of Australian classrooms changed, there remained a persistent cycle of disadvantage experienced by Aboriginal students to long-lasting effect. Data analysis of key

characteristics influencing labour force participation and unemployment rates for Aboriginal people concluded that education, in particular completion of Year 12 or higher qualifications, had an effect on participation in the workforce (Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision [SCRGSP], 2014). A number of social, health and educational determinants influence school attendance by Aboriginal students (Grindlay, 2017) and this has a long-term effect on academic performance and future employment prospects. Remoteness was of significance with Aboriginal people in remote areas more likely to be unemployed (SCRGSP, 2014). Regardless of location, poor access to education made “the greatest contribution to the gap in labour market outcomes” (ABS, 2014b, p. 12) between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. The statistics of academic achievements of many Aboriginal students are a product of over two centuries of inequality in Aboriginal education (Ministerial Council for Education Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs, 2010; Perso, 2012).

Research demonstrates that the teacher-student relationship has an important bearing on student academic success. The cultural competence of teachers, or lack thereof, directly impacts the learning environment and is influential in students’ future academic performance (Gower, 2012, p. 229). More particularly, the “centrality” of the teacher-student relationship is of significance in assisting students to feel a “sense of connection and belonging with school” (Gower, 2012, p. 161). Aboriginal students in boarding schools valued teachers more highly who were “perceived as interested in building positive, genuine, and reciprocal relationships” (Gower, 2012, p. 162).

The A Share in the Future review recommended greater consistency of cultural training for teachers, acknowledging that a key factor in increasing Aboriginal students’ wellbeing is recognition of their “background, experience, language and culture” (Wilson, 2014, p. 179). The learning engagement of Aboriginal students improves when teachers incorporate cultural references into the curriculum and when schools take a proactive approach to involving parents and community (Armstrong et al., 2012; Burridge et al., 2012). However, there is difficulty in proving the learning effect between what teachers say and do in the classroom and the lifelong success of students, or that which contributes towards wellbeing when viewed from a “whole-of-life perspective” (Day et al., 2016, p. 376), due to many other compounding factors.

The continuing disparity between academic achievements of Aboriginal students and their non- Aboriginal peers has led to government reviews focused on attendance and achievement in rural, regional and remote schools (e.g., Grindlay, 2017; Halsey, 2018; Wilson, 2014). While governments, schools and communities may stipulate what needs to be done and which targets should be met, effective strategies seem few and far between in a bald statistical sense. In 2017, 9.8 percentage points separated the average attendance rates of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students (ACARA, 2019). When the numbers appear seemingly immovable, leading to “intractable” academic inequality (Banks, 2016, p. 93), it is understandably difficult to know where solutions may lie.

Media attention on the failure of respective governments to meet Closing the Gap targets (Buckskin, 2018; Conifer & Higgins, 2019; Hogarth, 2019) can, in effect, pull focus from significant efforts made by parents and communities to ensure Aboriginal students attend school and gain an education. For some Aboriginal students, particularly those who are the first in their families to complete Year 12, meeting academic milestones can be a difficult and daunting enterprise. Many obstacles stand in the way, for example, health (McCalman et al., 2020), harsh weather conditions (Grindlay, 2017), access to services, financial burdens, and feelings of isolation (Hose et al., 2018).

2.1.4.1. Barriers to learning for Aboriginal students

Factors affecting the learning experience of Aboriginal students are known as health, social and educational determinants (Armstrong et al., 2012). The relationship between cultural competency and health outcomes has been investigated (Bainbridge et al., 2015) in health settings. Health issues can have a major effect on education accessibility. Studies, notably the Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey (WA ACHS), have examined the health of Aboriginal young people and

identified cycles of disadvantage and factors contributing to the perpetuation of these cycles (Zubrick et al., 2005). Infections, limited community resources, and historical experience of trauma serve to contribute towards “the gravity and breadth of the physical and mental health morbidities” for Aboriginal people and fundamental change is required in order to produce health advantages and increased wellbeing (Blair et al., 2005, p. 435). An overview of health in remote communities (Blair et al., 2005, p. 434) noted disparities in perceived support provided by parents and schools that, when combined with low expectations and limited future pathways to employment, were influential on Aboriginal students’ attitudes to school and learning. Cause, effect and consequence resulted in poor behaviour, reduced academic performance and in tragically increasing numbers, loss of hope and increased suicides (Zubrick et al., 2005).

The longitudinal study On Track (ACER, 2014) found that although Victorian school leavers were meaningfully engaged in study, work or apprenticeships, Aboriginal students were not completing Year 12 at rates comparable to their non-Aboriginal peers (ACER, 2014, p. 7). Issues that can arise in

the classroom can affect the learning that occurs, such as health and wellbeing aspects, culturally different ways of learning and being, and in boarding schools, additional factors may impact students, including homesickness, community responsibilities and obligations to cultural responsibilities. Reaching targets for school attendance and retention have so far proved elusive. This is despite initiatives to improve Aboriginal students’ access to and engagement with secondary schooling and employment pathways (ACARA, 2012, pp. 27-28) such as data tracking of Aboriginal student enrolments and retention in school (ABS, 2020), and statistical reporting against government benchmarks (ACARA, 2019). Gulfs in Year 12 completion rates and subsequent engagement in employment and higher education have been difficult to nudge closed, although positive progress has been made in Year 12 attainment (Conifer & Higgins, 2019). A study of quality of life indicators for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students by Dillon et al. (2020) collected data from 171 primary schools in New South Wales for students in Years 4-6. Data indicated that while both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students showed similarities in how community and teacher support related to their wellbeing, differences were evident in the way in which family support related to wellbeing. Family support was correlated positively with the wellbeing of Aboriginal students, not so for non-Aboriginal students:

This finding, as well as past research, suggests that enabling Aboriginal families to be supportive in their children’s education can assist not only in promoting wellbeing, but also academic outcomes, thereby enriching the whole school experience for Aboriginal children. (Dillon et al., 2020, p. 10)

A systematic review of the impact of racism on Aboriginal students’ education (Burgess et al., 2019; The Educator, 2018) was conducted by thirteen academics with over 10,000 Australian studies analysed. Findings revealed that racism affected many areas of life and learning, with issues including literacy, numeracy, school leadership, remote education and school-community partnerships

(Guenther et al., 2019). In a separate study, Dr Kevin Lowe’s review on factors affecting the

development of partnerships between schools and Aboriginal communities found that parents sought collaborative and transformative relationships that would be of benefit to their children’s educational opportunities (Harrison et al., 2019; Lowe et al., 2019; The Educator, 2018). The construction of “two-way relationships” required trust and respect, leading to increased teacher effectiveness: “Teachers’ beliefs determined their success in the classroom. Teachers often had strong

preconceptions about Aboriginal kids and communities even if they had little or no experience in these communities” (The Educator, 2018, para. 14). Teachers’ development of skills for cross-cultural communication and teaching in culturally diverse classrooms will be discussed later in this chapter. Constructing a positive ‘two way’ dialogue between school and family is an important aspect for the

relationship between education and community aspirations, arguably never more so than in a boarding school context.