Aboriginal School Enrolment And Retention Rates

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:02): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. What are the latest Aboriginal enrolment and retention figures at public schools?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for the Public Sector) (15:03): While acknowledging that there is a great deal more work to be done, including on the APY lands, I had a very interesting conversation over the weekend with a teacher on the APY lands about ways in which things are improving there but still have a long way to go. Nonetheless, overall, the results for Aboriginal students are pleasingly going in the right direction. In fact, over the last decade there has been a significant improvement in the number of students enrolling.

I will give you the specifics. For state schools, in 2005 there were 7,000 Aboriginal students and in 2014 there were 9,700. For preschool students, in 1999 there were 869 and in 2014 there were 1,642, which is not far off a doubling. It is an extremely important part of what we're looking for with any disadvantaged community, and in particular with Aboriginal students, that engagement early, ideally before official school starts, will give them the best possible opportunities to participate well in school and to keep up and learn and then to graduate.

There are two strategies that we've employed to work with Aboriginal communities and with our schools. One is to work very strongly with the parents, to engage with the parents in the ways in which they can assist their children to engage actively in their school and education. We have a program called Starting Out Right which involves quite intensive discussions with parents.

Another way in which we have worked on improving the outcomes for Aboriginal students is to work on the school environments themselves to make them 'culturally competent', as the terminology is, to make them inclusive. For example, at the moment we have 12 homework centres for Aboriginal students, where they can stay after school or during lunchtime and work on their school work and get that extra attention. That is an excellent strategy.

In all we have now an 85 per cent retention rate for Aboriginal students. We still haven't entirely closed the gap, as we are all trying to do in all our areas, but that is a significant improvement and I am pleased to see it. I would like to congratulate the teachers involved, the SSOs involved, particularly the Aboriginal education workers, the parents, the leaders in the Aboriginal community and the Aboriginal students themselves for these pleasing results.