Attendance rates for Indigenous students remain lower than for non‑Indigenous students (around 82 per cent compared to 92 per cent in 2019). Gaps in attendance are evident for Indigenous children as a group from the first year of schooling. The attendance gap widens during secondary school.
Poor attainment has been attributed to lower I.Q. and ability, inadequate home environments, and poor parenting and not to the inadequacies of the education provided, to prejudices Aboriginal children face or to the active resistance by Aboriginal people to the cultural destruction implicit in many educational programs ...
Figure 3.1: Student attendance rates
In 2018, the national school attendance rate was around 82% for Indigenous students. This compares to an attendance rate for non-Indigenous students of around 93%.
1870. In the early 1870s the first Aboriginal children are enrolled in the public schools in NSW. By 1880 there are 200 Aboriginal children in school in NSW.
Some Aboriginal parents may not be able to assist their children with formal learning • Some Aboriginal parents may not be able to assist children with the formal expectations of school • Some Aboriginal parents may distrust schools as 'white' institutions • Some Aboriginal parents may tolerate their own children's ...
It's a story that has been repeated for generations of Aboriginal families in Australia, and it's still happening today. In 2019/20, 952 Aboriginal children across NSW were removed from their families, a 2.6% increase on the year prior.
In NSW, the proportion of Indigenous final year high school students attaining their HSC has gone backwards from 46 per cent in 2017 to 45 per cent in 2020 and 43 per cent in 2021.
Nationally in 2022, 42.8 per cent of children aged 0-17 years old in out-of-home care were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander – an increase of 2.8 percentage points since 2019 (figure SE12b. 1).
When compared with younger Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who had left school at Year 9 or below, those who had completed Year 12 were less likely to have reported high/very high levels of psychological distress in the last four weeks (29% compared with 35%).
In Aboriginal communities, the responsibility of raising children is often seen as the responsibility of the entire family rather than the biological parents alone, and so adoption was not necessary and an unknown practice in traditional Aboriginal culture.
Why were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children taken from their families? The forcible removal of First Nations children from their families was based on assimilation policies, which claimed that the lives of First Nations people would be improved if they became part of white society.
Why are literacy rates so low? The reasons for low Aboriginal literacy rates are complex and affect both juvenile and adult learners: Parents know little. Parents often left school without basic literacy and numeracy skills, providing the children with a low-literate home environment.
Most indicators of poverty and related disadvantage show that Indigenous people are between two and three times worse off than non-Indigenous people in Australia. About 30 per cent of Indigenous households are in income poverty, which indicates that over 120,000 Indigenous people are living below the poverty line.
The number of Indigenous people in the United States of America is estimated at between 2.5 and 6 million,1 of which around 20% live in American Indian areas or Alaska Native villages. Indigenous Peoples in the United States are more commonly referred to as Native groups.
PovertyWho is affected? This graph shows that the poverty rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is 31%, and that poverty amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is twice as high in very remote communities (54%) as in major cities (24%).
In 2021–22, there were 106 deaths in custody: 84 in prison custody and 22 in police custody or custody-related operations. In total, there were 24 Indigenous deaths and 81 non-Indigenous deaths in custody and one death of a person whose Indigenous status was unknown.
Estimates of numbers have been widely disputed. The Bringing Them Home report (produced by the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families in 1987), says that "at least 100,000" children were removed from their parents.
The birth rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander females fluctuated between 68 per 1,000 in 2005 and 77 per 1,000 in 2016, and was 75 per 1,000 in 2020.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children represent 37% of the total population of all children that have been removed from their parents – a staggering 20,077 children – but represent only 6% of the total population of children in Australia.
For Indigenous Australians, the unemployment rate decreased between 2016 and 2021, from 15.0% to 10.0%, while for non-Indigenous Australians it decreased from 5.3% to 4.0%. The gap in unemployment rates was lower in 2021 (6.0 percentage points) than in 2016 (9.7 percentage points) (Table D2. 07.18).
In the 1860s, Victoria became the first state to pass laws authorising Aboriginal children to be removed from their parents. Similar policies were later adopted by other states and territories – and by the federal government when it was established in the 1900s.
By 1969, all states had repealed the legislation allowing for the removal of Aboriginal children under the policy of 'protection'.
In Victoria, the term 'Forgotten Australians' refers to people who spent time as children in institutions, orphanages and other forms of out-of-home 'care', prior to 1990, many of whom had physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse perpetrated against them.
These children were forcibly removed from their families and communities through race-based policies set up by both State and Federal Governments. They were either put in to homes, adopted or fostered out to non-Indigenous families.