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Indigenous Education Inequality in Australia

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Indigenous Education Inequality in Australia IN SEARCH OF THE COMMON WEALTH: INDIGENOUS EDUCATION INEQUALITY IN AUSTRALIA Jennifer M. Dean A thesis submitted to the University of Canberra in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Education October 2019 We are an extraordinary country. We are in so many respects the envy of the world. If I was sitting here where my friends are tonight, I would be arguing passionately for this country. But I stand here with my ancestors, and the view looks very different from where I stand. —Stan Grant, 2015 v ABSTRACT This research examines factors influencing education inequality among Indigenous Australians. The value of education has been recognised by Australian governments in previous decades through the introduction of expansionary policies encouraging participation across all sectors. Yet it is still the case that neither educational opportunities nor outcomes are distributed evenly. Research has shown that levels of education are likely to be influenced by factors including race, socioeconomic status and location. Indeed, profound levels of education inequality have been observed for Indigenous Australians, and the colonial experience has resulted in overwhelming challenges due to the collective histories they have experienced. In the colonial period, this disadvantage was manifest in the separation of people on the basis of race and racial identification, as well as restrictions in mobility, employment, levels of community, welfare provision, and education policies and practice. Since then, differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people have been maintained both socially and spatially, and the longer-term effects of colonialism have meant that Indigenous people in the poorest communities continue to experience substantial levels of educational and other forms of disadvantage. Using a structural and relational framework, the aims of this research are to examine the interrelationship between place, race and socioeconomic status in influencing Indigenous schooling outcomes, and the association between institutional effects, segregation and Indigenous children’s school achievement. The research uses microdata from the 2011 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, and data combining the 2011 National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy and the 2011 Census of Population and Housing to support the analyses. It has a focus on literacy and numeracy achievement for children in the middle primary school years. In line with the hypothesis that colonisation processes have resulted in spatial concentrations of disadvantage for Indigenous people in Australia, a research strategy is adopted which investigates the nature of the schooling inequality and levels of disadvantage experienced by Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. vi Considering the outcomes of the most vulnerable in a society may give the best indication of how effectively that society is able to draw upon its resources, embodied in the notion of the ‘common wealth.’ I argue that differences in levels of school socioeconomic composition and segregation both structure and maintain Indigenous children’s inequality in schooling outcomes, particularly in socioeconomically disadvantaged schools and communities. This research explores the importance of structural factors in understanding how education inequality might persist or be ameliorated. The findings demonstrate relationships between socioeconomic status, school composition and segregation, and have important implications for Indigenous people in low socioeconomic status schools and communities. vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to thank my supervisors Professor Moosung Lee and Dr. Jenny Chesters. Your comments on my work have always been candid and respectful, and I have appreciated your guidance, professional support, knowledge, enthusiasm and perseverance. I thank the Indigenous people and communities who participated in the collections that the data and case studies in this thesis are based upon. Without the goodwill and trust of these people and communities, there would be no evidence through which researchers could seek to influence policy and research agendas. I would also like to thank the Indigenous scholars whose theoretical views are represented in my research. I also thank the staff in the Education Faculty at the University of Canberra for their comments on my research right from the earliest stages. I acknowledge the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network that provided the critical infrastructure for me to conduct research about places and communities. I thank staff at the Australian Council of Educational Research, who facilitated access to the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and gave me advice on the data in that collection. I also acknowledge the Australian Bureau of Statistics for giving me access to TableBuilder. Using this facility, I was able to analyse a wealth of data from the Census of Population and Housing at a fine level of detail. I would also like to acknowledge the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority who granted me access to its data so that I could conduct research on schools. This thesis was edited by Kathie Brown and Nicola Watson of A+ Academic Editing Canberra, an organisation which is a member of the Canberra Society of Editors. The services comprised copy editing and proofreading and were undertaken in accordance with standards D and E of the Australian Standards for Editing Practice. I thank Kathie and Nicola for their assistance. Finally, I acknowledge the support of my family and friends, some of whom are on their own ‘thesis journeys.’ You believed in me and got me to this stage with understanding and a sense of humour. ix PERMISSIONS AND APPROVALS This research was conducted with ethics approval from the University of Canberra Human Research Ethics Committee, Approval number 16-166, in accordance with the requirements of the Human Research Ethics Manual, retrieved from https://www.canberra.edu.au/research/ucresearch/ethics/accordion/human-ethics/human- ethics-documents/Human_Ethics_Manual_April18.pdf The material in Figure 3.1 (p. 58 of this thesis) is copyright to John Wiley and Sons © 2015 Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and is made available under Licence number 4567940655274. The original material was published as Figure 7 on page 135 of the article by B. H. Hunter and J. Carmody (2015), with the reference details: Estimating the Aboriginal population in early colonial Australia: the role of chickenpox reconsidered. Australian Economic History Review, 55(2), 112–138. It can be retrieved from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/aehr.12068. Only the title of the material has been altered. The material in Figure 3.3 (p. 66 of this thesis) is copyright © Commonwealth of Australia, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and is made available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The material was retrieved from https://www.pmc.gov.au/indigenous-affairs/closing-gap/closing- gap-2016-australian-government-programmes-and-initiatives, and only the title of the material has been altered. The material in Figure 3.4 (p. 67 of this thesis) is used with the permission of the author, granted in an email on 18 April 2019. The original material was published as Figure 4 on page 7 of the article by J. Altman (2014), with the reference details: The political ecology and political economy of the Indigenous land titling ‘revolution’ in Australia. Paper presented at the Mãori Law Review: Indigenous Law Speaker Series, Wellington, New Zealand. It can be retrieved from http://maorilawreview.co.nz/2014/03/the-political-ecology-and-political- economy-of-the-indigenous-land-revolution-in-australia/. Only the title of the material has been altered. xi PUBLISHED WORK The following article has previously been published from research related to this thesis (specifically, material in Chapters 2, 3, 5 and 7): Dean, J. (2018). Segregation effects on Australian Indigenous primary school achievement. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 38(3), 361-377. xiii CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF AUTHORSHIP ................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................. vii PERMISSIONS AND APPROVALS .................................................................................... ix PUBLISHED WORK ............................................................................................................. xi ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................................ xxiii 1. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Indigenous school achievement: A paradox .................................................................. 1 1.2 Focus of this research..................................................................................................... 2 1.3 Aims and research questions .......................................................................................... 3 1.4 Epistemology ................................................................................................................
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