News

Education system fails Goulburn Valley’s indigenous students

Media Release, Wednesday 23 June 2004

Indigenous educational outcomes in the Goulburn Valley region of Victoria are very poor compared with regional, state or national averages according to a new University of Melbourne study.

The study by Dr Katrina Alford, a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Population Health, is to be published in the International Journal of Learning (Denying Aboriginal Identity in South-East Australia: the failure of the assimilation model in schools. Volume 10, 2003-04).

Dr Alford said the Goulburn Valley had the highest concentration of Indigenous people outside the capital city of Melbourne. An estimated 4000 to 5000 Koories comprise about 10% of the region’s total population, which is a small but significant minority.

Dr Alford said like most Indigenous people throughout south-east Australia, they are expected to ‘assimilate’ into the mainstream education system.

“While government policy now preaches the need for greater recognition of Indigenous people’s distinctive cultural and educational needs, this is rarely observed in practice in schools in the region,” she said.

She said in reality, most Indigenous youth do not ‘assimilate’ in mainstream schools.

School retention rates are very low, with an average of 34.8% completing Year 12 (1999-2002) compared with 65% for the total secondary school population in the region, and about 75% for the State of Victoria.

These rates are slightly lower than the average for all Indigenous people in Victoria and Australia (36%), and substantially lower than those for the total Australian population (73%).

The study was focused on secondary schooling, but noted some evidence suggesting that a significant proportion of Indigenous youths ‘disappear’ from the school system altogether at the end of primary school. That is, they never arrive at secondary schools.

The study also found that school-based deficiencies, family and community-based influences and broader social and environment barriers were all contributing to the educational disengagement and failure of many Indigenous youths in the region.

“The implications of this study are bleak. The current generation of Indigenous youth in this and similar regions is facing a future of unemployment, poverty and social alienation as extreme as that faced by their forebears,” she said.

“The findings suggest that geographical remoteness or isolation is not the prime cause of this, but rather social remoteness and exclusion. Indigenous people’s social exclusion may indeed be even greater in relatively more ‘Europeanised’ and urbanised regions such as south-east Australia than in remote areas where cultural suppression is not as severe or intense.”

Dr Alford’s study recommended major reforms to the schooling system to make it more culturally and educationally appealing to Indigenous students. Failing this, the creation of specialist Indigenous secondary and tertiary educational institutions should be explored.

Dr Alford said the study provides hard evidence in support of the current initiative by the Rumbalara Football Netball Club and the University of Melbourne to develop a predominantly Indigenous further education and training institution in Shepparton.

ASHE (the Academy of Sports Health and Education) will commence operations in July 2004, and will also work with regional schools and the TAFE system to improve Indigenous education, training and employment outcomes.