Abstract
Indigenous groups are amongst the most disadvantaged minority groups in the developed world. This paper examines the educational disadvantage of indigenous Australians by assessing academic performance at a relatively early age. We find that, by the age of 10, indigenous Australians are substantially behind non-indigenous Australians in academic achievement. Their relative performance deteriorates further over the next 2 years. School and locality do not appear to be important determinants of the indigenous to non-indigenous achievement gap. However, geographic remoteness, indigenous ethnicity and language use at home have a marked influence on educational achievement. A current focus of Australian indigenous policy is to increase school resources. Our results suggest that this will not eliminate indigenous educational disadvantage on its own.
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Notes
A notable exception is Biddle et al. (2004), which includes an examination of differences in secondary educational participation between Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
Kuhn and Sweetman (2002) argue, however, that the effect of geographical remoteness on indigenous outcomes may reflect cultural rather than spatial factors.
There were 87,322 Aborigines residing in Queensland in 2001 compared to 16,415 Torres Strait Islanders.
Note, however, that variations in income between geographic areas (measured here at a postcode level) are less than within-area variations in income (Hunter and Gregory 1996). Note also that non-indigenous groups may locate in remote areas in search of well-paid jobs in the mining industries, whereas the location decisions of indigenous groups are associated with their historical ties to these areas.
Although this average effect might mask variations by reason of attrition, which we do not observe.
To compute the z-scores, the raw test score is transformed using the following formula \(\frac{T_{i12}-\overline{T}}{\sigma _{T}}\) and the models are re-estimated.
The relatively high coefficient for mathematics implies that students who do not have good basic mathematics skills by age 10 find it difficult to catch-up in maths. This is less marked for literacy where the opportunity for catch-up is greater.
In addition, the estimate of the difference between Torres Strait Islanders and ESB literacy performance widens and becomes significant for boys.
Test statistic results for urban vs rural/remote Aborigines (p values) are the following: male literacy (0.01), female literacy (0.00), male numeracy (0.00), female numeracy (0.00). Test statistic results for urban vs rural/remote Torres Strait Islanders (p values): male literacy (0.99), female literacy (0.38), male numeracy (0.23), female numeracy (0.77).
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Acknowledgement
The authors would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of three anonymous referees, along with the editor. G.Leeves and C.Green would also like to acknowledge financial support for this project provided by the University of Queensland Research Development Grant No. 2004001602. The authors thank Education Queensland for providing access to the data.
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Responsible editor: Deborah Cobb-Clark
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Bradley, S., Draca, M., Green, C. et al. The magnitude of educational disadvantage of indigenous minority groups in Australia. J Popul Econ 20, 547–569 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-006-0076-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-006-0076-9