Indigenous Students Miss Out
By any benchmark indigenous students in this country are way behind, with distance, cultural issues and poverty meaning that few get beyond high school and many in remote areas are struggling to make it past primary. Yet special support measures for indigenous students have been rolled back since the demise of ATSIC. A Senate Committee has been looking at the issue and this week unanimously condemned the changes. Darcel Moyle from the Indigenous Education Union says the bureaucratic changes in how money is applied for means that the schools that need it most don’t have the skills and resources to get it. Neil Free, principal of Uralla School in NSW which has a 25% indigenous enrolment says he has not received funding for the homework centre that the school has for indigenous students and many other programs are having to wind down, dispiriting both students and parents.