School attendance and educational achievement

A good education lays the basis for a good life. The Australian Government believes that more attention needs to be paid to improving educational outcomes for Indigenous people in the Northern Territory. This will also help people get jobs later in life.

What needs improving?

The Northern Territory has the largest gap in educational achievement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and significantly lower rates of school attendance for Indigenous students. Poor school attendance, especially in the first two to three years of school, has long-lasting effects on literacy and numeracy into adulthood.

What is being done?

Over the last four years, the Australian Government has worked with the Northern Territory Government to tackle some of the causes of poor educational outcomes for Indigenous people:

• more teachers and teacher housing have been put in place
• special programs are strengthening the teaching workforce
• the School Nutrition Program is providing a healthy breakfast and/or lunch in community schools
• family services, childcare, playgroups, crèches and pre-schools are being expanded
• a $1.7 billion investment in housing in the Territory’s Indigenous communities is providing better environments for children to study
• income management has helped to ensure there is money for children’s educational needs
• regular health checks, follow-up treatment and the promotion of healthy eating are addressing health issues that undermine children’s educational performance.

Directions for the future?

Improving education needs concerted actions from schools, communities and families. It starts at birth, so parents need to understand the benefits of play and early exposure to learning. Childcare, playgroups and pre-school help to establish good learning and attendance habits. Children also need to have a good experience at school, which means skilled and experienced teachers and principals and good support services in the classroom.

Improvements could be made through:

• improving early childhood services
• promoting stronger connections between early childhood services, preschools and schools
• ensuring students have personalised learning plans, negotiated between the school and the family
• more teachers with English as a Second Language qualifications
• providing on-site or regionally based teacher training for local Indigenous staff
• enabling existing Indigenous teacher assistants to gain teaching qualifications
• providing training and assistance for teachers to deal with discipline issues
• increasing special needs assistance in classrooms e.g. hearing and vision programs.

The Government has also used reforms to the welfare system to provide incentives for parents to send their children to school or to encourage young people to be in school or full-time training. These types of reforms could be extended.

The Government wants to hear from local people how we can ensure children go to school and succeed there.