1944. But between 1946 and 1948 Aboriginal Children required a medical certificate to attend public schools. Gradually more schools enrolled aboriginal children. However, it was still possible to exclude them on the grounds of “home conditions” or of “substantial community oppositions”.
1880 NSW Public Instruction Act
Aboriginal families in many areas enrolled their children in public schools.
Indigenous students attended school for around 82 per cent of the time in 2019—that is, for just over 4 days a week on average. This is around 10 percentage points lower than the attendance rate for non‑Indigenous students (92 per cent). The gap did not narrow between 2014 and 2019.
The first Aboriginal Education Policy, released in 1982, focused on the advancement of Aboriginal communities and an appreciation of Aboriginal cultures and societies by other Australians. A decade later, this landmark policy was reviewed to make the policy relevant to schools with small numbers of Aboriginal students.
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 ...
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.
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.
This happened from the mid-1800s to the 1970s. 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.
According to Partington, Gower & Beresford (2012) it was common for Aboriginal children to be formally excluded from state schools in New South Wales up until the 1950s. Plans to officially exclude children in the 1800s became formalised as government policy by 1902.
In NSW, under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909, the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board had wide ranging control over the lives of Aboriginal people, including the power to remove Aboriginal children from their families under a policy of 'assimilation'.
In 1969, New South Wales abolished the Aborigines Welfare Board, and this effectively resulted in all States and Territories having repealed legislation that allowed for the removal of Aboriginal children under a policy of 'protection'.
Barriers include inappropriate teaching materials and a lack of Aboriginal role models. Aboriginal education requires connection to communities and informed parents.
By 1969, all states had repealed the legislation allowing for the removal of Aboriginal children under the policy of 'protection'.
Australia's first state secondary school for girls, the Advanced School for Girls in Adelaide, was established in 1879 after campaigning by public health reformer Dr Allen Campbell, the writer and reformer Catherine Helen Spence, and educationist John Hartley, who was headmaster of Prince Alfred College.
1987. Aboriginal Education Policy made mandatory for all schools. Aboriginal Education Officers (Aboriginal Community Support) appointed to the Home School Liaison Program – but not in all Regions.
Figure 1 shows that, despite a decline of more than one-quarter over the last 15 years in the gap in apparent retention rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous young people, the gap is still almost 30 points: 41.5% compared with 72.1% for males, and 49.5% compared with 82.7% for females.
AIHW analysis of Census of Population and Housing 2021 (ABS 2022b). The proportion of Indigenous Australians aged 20–24 who had completed Year 12 or equivalent increased from 52% in the 2011 Census, to 63% in 2016, and 68% in 2021.
In NSW Aboriginal only schools are established. An Aboriginal child would need permission from all European (white) parents for an Aboriginal child to attend a public school.
The first Aboriginal Education Policy released in 1982 focused on the advancement of Aboriginal communities and an appreciation of Aboriginal cultures and societies by other Australians.
Abuse in institutions and missions
Children, even very young ones, were stripped of their names and only called by a number. Boys were flogged for wetting their bed or chained to a tree all alone overnight. The children were told that they weren't Aboriginal, that their mothers didn't want them or were dead.
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.
In addition to being 'neglected', children could also be found to be 'uncontrollable': an Aboriginal child who refused to go to school, for instance, could be considered 'uncontrollable', and in fact as many children were removed under the new legislation as had been under the Aborigines Protection Act.
In the 1900s, many Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities. It's estimated that as many as 1 in 3 Indigenous children were taken between 1910 and the 1970s, affecting most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Australia.
The Inquiry found that between one in three and one in ten Indigenous children were removed from their families under past government policies, but could not be more precise due to the poor state of records.
NSW Legislation (Adoption Act 2000), allows for the adoption of an Aboriginal child, but only when the making of an adoption order is clearly preferable and in the best interests of the child to any other care arrangement. Adoption is a major life decision, for parents and their child.