National report to Parliament on Indigenous education and training, 2006

Abstract:

This is the sixth in a series of annual reports to the Australian Parliament that tracks progress in Indigenous education and training and discusses issues under the major goals of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy (AEP). It enables the Commonwealth Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Training to report to the Parliament at the end of each funding year on outcomes associated with Indigenous education and training. There were mixed outcomes in Indigenous education and training in 2006. In general, enrolments, retention and employment demonstrated improvement across all education sectors but educational outcomes tended to be either stable or declining. Some of the key findings include: (a) the number of Indigenous children in pre-school increased in 2006 but large differences between attendance rates of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students remain; (b) appropriate literacy and numeracy awareness levels of Indigenous students in the government systems declined on the 2005 result however the opposite was true in non-government pre-schools; (c) there were significant increases in enrolments in Australian schools in 2006 with the overall proportion of Indigenous school students continuing to increase at both the primary and secondary levels. Despite improvements in enrolments there is still concern about attendance levels; (d) national literacy and numeracy benchmark test results are not encouraging and since 1999 there has been little evidence of improvement in the results - in 2006, the gap between Indigenous and All Students outcomes in the nine benchmarks averaged 20 percentage points and ranged from 13 percentage points in Year 3 to 32 percentage points in Year 7 numeracy; (e) since 2001 the Year 10 retention rate has improved by almost six percentage points to 91 per cent while the Year 11 rate has improved to 68 per cent; (f) the proportion of Indigenous students who achieved a Year 12 Certificate decreased for the first time since 2001 from 51 per cent to 45 per cent in 2006; (g) the vocational education and training (VET) sector continues to provide an important service for many Indigenous people - Indigenous VET students aged 17 or less had twice the participation rate of non-Indigenous students while there were 12 Indigenous male VET students for every Indigenous male university student; (h) almost half of all Indigenous students are enrolled in courses at the AQF Certificate I and II levels, about twice the rate of non-Indigenous students; (i) there were significant increases in the numbers of Indigenous apprentices in 2006, in the number of undertaking Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) Certificate III and higher level courses and in the number of course completions; (j) overall, 2006 was the best year to date for Indigenous employment in VET institutions with increased numbers of teachers and other staff; (k) overall Indigenous enrolments in higher education returned to 2001-2004 levels after a decline in 2005; (l) there has been an increase in the participation in higher level courses and a decline in students undertaking Enabling and other non-degree courses; and (m) a strong demand continues for Indigenous graduates who have higher take-up rates into full time employment than non-Indigenous graduates and higher starting salaries.