Investment key for education outcomes

AUSTRALIA – A new paper, commissioned by the Australian Education Union (AEU), on the relationship between welfare payments and school attendance in Northern Territory Indigenous communities, raises serious concerns about the viability of policy based on punitive measures.

Prof. Larissa Behrendt’s paper, Welfare Payments and School Attendance: An analysis of experimental policy in Indigenous education, finds adequate government investment will determine the success of education outcomes in Indigenous communities.

The paper recommends evidence based initiatives (such as investment in Indigenous education) that research consistently shows is key to improving education outcomes and shows that these are more likely to lift school attendance rates of Indigenous children in the NT.

Other issues raised in the paper include:

• 7000 Indigenous children are missing school, due in part to lack of basic infrastructure.

• Health – not truancy – is more often the reason for low school attendance.

• A government evaluation of trials in school attendance in Indigenous communities determined that attendance increased in schools with high quality teachers.

“To date, education minister, Julia Gillard has announced 19 of the 200 teachers promised over five years, and the NT Government an extra 10. This falls far short of the investment needed if the 2000 students currently not enrolled in schools in the NT do start attending,” said AEU Federal President Angelo Gavrielatos.

“Lack of investment is the biggest barrier to school attendance. As discussed in Prof. Behrendt’s paper, the Combined Aboriginal Organisations of the NT found that 94 per cent of Indigenous communities in NT have no preschool and 27 per cent have a local primary school that is more than 50 kilometres away."