Hi Rhian,

Let's remember two factors:

* the median age of Indigenous graduates is around 27 or 28;

* in 2014, there were around 10,000 Indigenous people in each of those age-groups.

2,023 graduates means the equivalent of around 20 % of an age-group completed university award-courses in 2014. That's probably better than the average for Europe.

Okay, that was four factors. But let's also remember another factor:

* around 10 % of the entire Aboriginal population are shut up in remote settlements, 'communities', with poor literacy and numeracy, distant in a multitude of ways from university participation.

If we add the alienated rural populations, this comes closer to 20 % of the entire Aboriginal population. Effectively, those 2023 Indigenous graduates came overwhelmingly from urban areas, studied in urban areas, and will find work in urban areas, with a slight drift to rural and remote areas.

So a paradox (or is it a dilemma?): Indigenous urban populations (and most likely, the children of working parents, and of mixed-marriages)are actively participating in university education, and for women, at 'standard' levels; rural and remote populations are not even as involved in such participation as they were in the 1990s. That Gap is not Closing.

So whose job is it to design and run programs to Close that dreadful and tragic Gap, no matter how hard and no matter how long it takes ?

All relevant data on my web-site: www.firstsources.info

Cheers,

Joe

Loudmouth, increased participation at universities by indigenous students is good news but where did these figures you quote come from? It would be interesting to see what proportion of these students are undertaking on-line programs.

Rehctub commented that "the best way to help people in remote areas, is to relocate them to less remote areas as the costs associated with providing services in the middle of nowhere simply don't weigh up any more". However, this applies less and less to university education, which is moving on-line and so is available from wherever you can get Internet access. I have been teaching on-line since 2009.

Some school education can also be delivered on-line to remote areas cost effectively (the older the student and the more academic the subject the better this works). Both the NT and Queensland education departments have centres which support remote students. This approach can be used to support individual students at home and to help teachers in remote areas. http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2014/02/australian-virtual-schooling.html

Hi Tom,

If you check out: https://education.gov.au/student-data
and scroll down the left-hand bar, you can get data as far back as 2004. If you check out the ABS Census data, say for 2006 and 2011, you can sort of triangulate with the DEST data, with slight adjustments for the different criteria used.

As for on-line programs, I suspect that, although many interested parties have always been anxious that Indigenous students stay away from campuses, that the proportion studying on-line has varied little in twenty years, and is much more likely now to be of post-graduate students, studying part-time as well. Of course, all students study on-line to an extent these days.

As for Indigenous remote students, I have to respectfully suggest that on-line and external study is utterly useless, something of a con-job used by some universities to pad their budgets, for absolutely no positive results. If people need a lot of preparation, you can't substitute the most whiz-bang on-line stuff for actual face-to-face, on-campus, working-together environments.

But I would suggest that the literacy and numeracy of people in remote settlements is so minimal after decades of phony bilingual education, that on-site preparation, over many years - many, many years - will be vital. If people have effectively missed out on twelve or thirteen years of schooling, no magic wand will suddenly bring their education level up enough to go to university, or perhaps even TAFE. OF COURSE, at some point in that long preparation process, on-campus experience, over weeks, then months, will also be vital: no silly one-day wandering around on an 'Open Day' will make the slightest difference.

So intensive on-site schooling for some years, then transition to TAFE or university, then on-campus enrolment - all with a renewed and hard-working student support effort. The low-hanging fruit, those urban kids coming straight through Year 12, are the easy part.

Now it might be time for university staff to actually do their jobs, since after all, universities get thousands of dollars for each Indigenous student enrolled, supposedly just for student support alone.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Joe, last week Harry Longworth from the OATSEA Foundation, talked about how they are producing e-learning modules for children in developing nations. The idea is to use games to teach basic literacy and numeracy. They have PNG and Pacific countries in mind, but have also entered the Global Learning XPRIZE competition, which targets Africa: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2015/08/free-apps-for-education-in-africa-and.html

Hi Tom,

I hope that could work somehow. But remote settlements have comparatively enormous financial inputs, the people have more-or-less life-long welfare - in Africa, the people have nothing. In Africa, education is competitive, i.e. not many kids can get any of it, while in remote Australia, school systems pay kids to come to school, provide breakfasts and many other inducements, if only kids will please come to school. African families have vastly better knowledge of the value of education and are vastly more desperate for their kids to get into schooling, since it's much more a matter of life and death.

So unsurprisingly, their kids would sweat blood to try your schemes, while the kids in remote settlements here would be vaguely non-plussed about their relevance. Sure, try them once and if they work, go for it. But the pathways from remote on-site education to on-campus university education and on-the -job TAFE training or apprenticeships will, almost every step of the way, involve face-to-face intensive instruction, along the lines that Noel Pearson advocates.

And first and foremost, the students have to be interested enough. Lifelong welfare is easier.

Joe

A very good privately run kids education program in a third world country is 'Fiji Kids Learning for Life'. Fiji Kids is a small charity presently educating 80 odd children in the Sigatoka Valley of Fiji. The education program extends beyond the child to the family and has been most successful.

http://www.fijikids.org/