Closing the gap clearinghouse School attendance and retention of Indigenous Australian students Issues Paper No 1 produced for the Closing the Gap Clearinghouse Nola Purdie and Sarah Buckley, September 2010 – the retention rate from Year 7/8 to Year 12 in 2009 Summary was 45% for Indigenous students compared with 77% for non-Indigenous students. • Engagement or participation in education is a key • This paper provides information on the different factor affecting the life chances of all Australians. It is approaches that have been used to improve particularly important for Indigenous Australians who attendance and/or retention, including programs that: have lower levels of educational attainment than non- – directly address attendance and/or retention, for Indigenous Australians. example through applying incentives or rewards for • Regular school attendance is important for achieving attendance or sanctions for non-attendance core skills, such as literacy and numeracy, and – indirectly address attendance and retention issues, achieving adequate levels of education is one of the key for example through attempts to improve literacy factors that is likely to reduce Indigenous disadvantage. and numeracy outcomes; improve teacher quality; • A combination of home, school and individual factors develop culturally relevant curricular. are involved in students’ absence from school, • A review of the literature that evaluated which although the relative importance of the various programs work to increase attendance or retention causes is contested: found that there were very few high-quality – parents and students tend to stress school-related evaluations that had been conducted in this area. factors (for example, poor teaching and failure to The evidence about attendance and retention engage students); educators tend to stress parental strategies that work for Indigenous students is, attitudes and the home environment (for example, therefore, not strong. poor parental attitudes to school). • A common feature of successful educational • The available data on attendance and retention are programs, however, was that of a creative limited, though there is evidence that Year 7/8 to Year collaboration, which builds bridges between public 12 school retention rates for Indigenous students have agencies and the community, often by engaging improved over the last 10 years (from 35% in 1999 to parents or community-based organisations. 45% in 2009). • Although it is important to continue small, • The available data also show that the gap in school contextualised investigations of participation attendance and retention between Indigenous and and engagement issues, more large-scale research non-Indigenous students is large: is needed. – the proportion of students attending school is some • It is recommended that any new programs or 10 percentage points lower than non-Indigenous strategies for improvement should build in monitoring students and this gap increases as the level of and evaluation components. schooling increases 1 School attendance and retention of Indigenous Australian Students detailed analysis. Greater weight is given to conceptual Contents studies that analyse data according to conceptual themes but these studies may be limited by a lack of diversity Summary . 1 in the sample. Studies using conceptual frameworks, appropriate sampling and data analysis techniques, Introduction . 2 and that can be generalised to a wider context are Reasons for non-attendance and causes of the gap . 2 considered to provide the best evidence for policy and Measures of school attendance and retention . 4 practice development (Daly et al. 2007). What has been tried? . 6 What works? . 16 Methodology Implications for policy and research . 20 An initial literature search was conducted using several key databases: Family and Society, Australian Education Abbreviations . 22 Index (AEI), Education Resources Information Centre References . 23 (ERIC), American Psychological Association database (PsychINFO), SocINDEX Database (SocINDEX). Key Terminology . 25 search terms included: school attendance, school Acknowledgements . 25 retention, school participation, school readiness, educational participation, educational aspirations, absenteeism, truancy, attendance patterns, dropouts, and school holding power. Introduction Relevant Australian and international literature published in the last 10 years was identified. This core literature Engagement or participation in education is a key was supplemented with literature identified through factor affecting the life chances of all Australians, and internet searches, and reference lists within the initial it is particularly important for Indigenous Australians publications consulted. The identified literature included who have an overall lower level of participation in reports of large-scale data collections and interpretations education than non-Indigenous Australians. Higher thereof, as well as single case studies that were levels of educational attainment improve employment essentially qualitative in nature, and which may have opportunities, are associated with higher income and adopted an action-research approach. promote participation in all societal activities. Education includes preschool education, primary and high school In addition, relevant personnel in state and territory education, tertiary education and vocational training, education jurisdictions and independent organisations/ as well as education and training outside a formal foundations were contacted to seek material that was institutional framework. This issues paper deals with not publicly available but which documented strategies, school attendance and retention. programs and practices that had been implemented, and evaluations of these. This paper draws upon key national and international literature pertaining to both Indigenous and non- Indigenous students. It highlights the issues in analysing Indigenous and non-Indigenous school attendance and retention; the gap in school attendance and retention and Reasons for non- the causes of this gap; and the success or otherwise of the various programs and initiatives designed to reduce attendance and causes the gap. Issues in the quality of the data and research are also discussed. of the gap A key purpose of the paper is to evaluate the quality A combination of home, school and individual factors are of available evidence regarding strategies for improving involved in students’ decisions to miss school although school attendance. This paper gives more weight to the causes of non-attendance are contested. While research that is higher up the evidence hierarchy. parents and pupils tend to stress school-related factors Evidence hierarchies reflect the relative authority of as the main cause, staff in education jurisdictions and various types of research. The studies least likely to teachers tend to believe that parental attitudes and produce good evidence for policy and practice are the home environment are more influential (Gray & single case studies, followed by descriptive studies that Partington 2003; Malcolm et al. 2003). may provide helpful lists of quotations but do not offer 2 School attendance and retention of Indigenous Australian Students Causes of non-attendance Box 1: Causes of non-attendance (from Reid, 2008) National and international research indicates that the 1. Parents and carers: causes of non-attendance are constantly changing • parental-condoned absenteeism, parents failing in accord with developments in modern life. Across to accept their legal responsibilities countries, there is a consistency in the reasons that are generally presented. Reid (2008) has summarised these • poor parental/carer attitudes towards schools causes, as shown in Box 1. • ‘them’ and ‘us’ attitude between schools and parents Indigenous-specific reasons for non-attendance have been proposed (Biddle et al. 2004; Herbert et al. 1999; 2. Society: Schwab 2001)—the majority of which relate to a lack of • insufficiently valuing education recognition by schools of Indigenous culture and history; • inadequate welfare support practices, especially failure to fully engage parents, carers and the community; in the early years of schooling and ongoing disadvantage in many areas of the daily lives of Indigenous Australians. 3. Schools: • poor teaching • inconsistent approach to absenteeism between Consequences of and within schools non-attendance 4. Government: Children who regularly miss school are likely to • lenient application of law experience significant disruption to their education. A • unsuitable curriculum for some pupils student who misses more than one full day per week on • too few out-of-school/alternative curriculum places average would lose two years of education over a 10- year period (Western Australia: Office of the Auditor 5. Students: General 2009). Many reports highlight the importance • bullying, peer pressure, ‘cool’ to skip school of regular school attendance in order to achieve core • lack of career aspirations skills, such as literacy and numeracy, and note that • low self-esteem achieving adequate levels of education is one of the key contributors to overcoming Indigenous disadvantage. 6. Education jurisdictions: • inconsistent policies and practices of local schools Two key Western Australian research studies by the and education welfare services Institute for Child Health Research (Zubrick et al. 2005; Zubrick et al. 2006) have shown that a student’s level of • inconsistent referral policies