Media Releases
INDIGENOUS EDUCATION ‘GAP’ A COVER UP FOR POLICY FAILURE
Governments have been setting targets to ‘close the gap’ in Indigenous education for the past 20 years, and yet literacy and numeracy have not improved. Large volumes of taxpayer funds have been committed, but the politically painful, tough policy decisions have not been made, says a new report by the Centre for Independent Studies.
A year ago, on 7 April 2008, CIS released Indigenous Education in the Northern Territory, which showed that almost all Indigenous children at remote schools in the Northern Territory were leaving school unable to read, write or count.
Since then, the results of the first The National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) literacy and numeracy tests have vindicated the report’s findings.
And yet, at the end of 2008, another 1,000 illiterate and non-numerate youngsters were added to the pool of unemployed Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders languishing in remote settlements.
In Revisiting Indigenous Education, Professor Helen Hughes and Mark Hughes argue that there is no ‘gap’ between the literacy and numeracy of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. The gap is between Indigenous students in mainstream schools and Indigenous students in non-performing remote schools.
The education ‘gap’ is a myth that masks the failure of non-performing schools.
‘Having a language background other than English is not the cause of high Indigenous literacy and numeracy failure rates. It is, instead, Indigenous ‘bilingual’ programs that are failing to deliver literacy and numeracy in any language.’
‘Last year the Commonwealth government provided nearly $100 million in additional funding for NT education, but there have been no substantive policy changes,’ says Professor Hughes.
‘The Labor government has not yet honoured its election commitment to make school-by-school NAPLAN data available to parents and the public,’ says Professor Hughes.
‘A three-year timetable is realistic to transform non-performing schools. This requires the immediate conversion of the Northern Territories 44 Home Learning Centres into schools. Australia has the resources to reform remote Indigenous education; all it needs now is the political will to do so.
Helen Hughes is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies and Mark Hughes is an independent researcher.
Professor Helen Hughes is available for comment.
The report is available online at http://www.cis.org.au/policy_monographs/pm94.pdf
