Opinion & Commentary
Report into literacy and numeracy too narrow
Late last month, in his address to Reconciliation Australia, Prime Minister John Howard said education lay at the heart of bridging the gulf between indigenous Australians and the rest of the community, and governments had an obligation to ensure that existing resources were well spent and that more resources made a difference.
We all knew, he said, that achievement in literacy and numeracy in primary school was the key determinant of future school achievement and retention, and that low literacy and numeracy was more ''acute'' in indigenous communities than in the rest of the Australian community.
There is certainly an alarming educational achievement gap in literacy and numeracy. But how big is the gap? Do literacy levels vary across indigenous communities? Do some schools achieve great results where others fail?
Thanks to the introduction of national literacy benchmark assessment and reporting for Years 3, 5, and 7, we know more about literacy and numeracy levels than we did a decade ago. But the National Report on Schooling in Australia, which reports on achievement against the benchmarks, is quite limited in what it tells us.
For a start, the benchmarks are only minimum standards - the minimum that children need to make ''sufficient progress'' at school, but hardly to prosper. Experts have suggested that the benchmarks may well underestimate the number of children who are reading and writing below their age level.
What's more, the results against the benchmarks are only reported on a pass or fail basis. This can give the distorted picture that there is a fixed line to be crossed between illiteracy and literacy. We do not know if children who are achieving the benchmark have basic or advanced literacy for their age.
The report also obscures the gap between remote and urban indigenous students by aggregating their results. According to the latest report, 77 per cent of indigenous students in Year 3 achieved the literacy benchmark for their year group, compared with 92 per cent of non-indigenous students. But what the report does not tell us is that, in remote communities in the Northern Territory, only 20 per cent of indigenous students in Year 3 achieved the same benchmark.
According to the latest report in 2004, 83 per cent of indigenous students and 93 per cent of students overall in Year 3 achieved the literacy benchmark for their year. (There is no separate statistic for non-indigenous students.) But Northern Territory data tells us that only 20 per cent of indigenous students in remote communities achieved the benchmark.
And the results can vary widely across remote indigenous communities. For example, not one child in the Northern Territory community of Wugularr (Beswick), 120km south of Katherine, achieved the literacy benchmark for Year 3 in 2004.
To ensure that existing resources are well spent and more resources make a difference, we need better information about literacy and numeracy levels. Governments, educators and researchers cannot develop and implement evidence-based policy using the existing reported evidence.
There is an urgent need to improve reporting of literacy and numeracy levels against the national benchmarks. It needs to be more up-to-date and more detailed.
Aggregated data obscures the performance of individual schools. Systemic failure to achieve against benchmarks should not be hidden in aggregated statistics.
More comprehensive data needs to be made publicly available to researchers and educators. In the United States, for example, the ''nation's report card'' provides a much more vibrant picture of students' achievement levels. The report card shows how many students are achieving at basic, proficient and advanced levels, and provides the scale score data. It provides essential information on the gap between different school districts, and between different groups of students, such as Hispanic or African-American students.
Better reporting on literacy and numeracy levels would allow us to confront the educational achievement gap where it is widest and to direct resources where they are most needed.
Minimum benchmarks are not enough. How can we ''foster a generation of indigenous Australians who recognise and reap the benefits of a good education and pass those values on to their children and grandchildren'' as the Prime Minister suggests, when we start off with such low standards?
Kirsten Storry is a Policy Analyst with The Centre for Independent Studies.
