Start with schools to lift indigenous uni outcomes

As the Behrendt review enters the public consultation phase, a leading indigenous academic says it is high schools that have the most influence. The primary responsibility for improving university education for indigenous Australians must transfer back to schools, says Professor Lester-Irabinna Rigney, the new dean of Aboriginal education at the University of Adelaide. Rigney told ***Campus Review*** that universities were playing “constant catch-up” with their indigenous students, providing education that should have been delivered by the school system. “What we know is that the gap in numeracy and literacy with indigenous peoples concretely begins in year 7,” Rigney said. “If we are going to grow an indigenous university workforce and indigenous university students, an investment needs to start well before. It’s fundamental that that role and responsibility shift back to schools in order to increase the transition [to university].” Schools, of course, needed adequate funds and resources to do the job, he said. Rigney anticipated the current review of indigenous access and outcomes in higher education, opened to public consultation last month, would make such recommendations. Chaired by Professor Larissa Behrendt, the review will pick up on educational goals outlined in the 2008 review of higher education by Professor Denise Bradley. It will report its findings to the federal government early next year. “[Bradley] only touched the surface around indigenous issues, particularly around how we recruit, maintain, retain, and graduate Aboriginal students from universities,” said Rigney. “There are some areas of complexities that are really important to recognise,” he added, especially how to deliver higher education to rural and remotes indigenous communities and how to address wider social disadvantages. Professor Steve Larkin, chair of the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council and a member of the four-person review panel, agreed some kind of intervention at the school level was required and that solutions were complex. “There are pedagogic approaches being taken within the secondary sector that are impacting on student aspirations and outcomes to get to year 12,” said Larkin. “We might very well say that as a university sector, but it’s our institutions that are training the teachers. “Quite clearly these problems aren’t so simplistic as to ask a particular sector to take full responsibility. We all need to be working together, but in different ways, to address the pipeline issue that’s been identified.” He said universities needed to improve completion rates for indigenous undergraduates and post-graduates, at the same time setting realistic targets against national equity goals. “Investment is going to increase through the reform of the sector as a consequence of the Bradley review,” Larkin said. “One of the imperatives that universities are going to have to confront and address, particularly through the compact process, is performance against the equity group targets: low-SES, indigenous, non-English speaking, and rural and remote students.”He said the Behrendt panellists were keen to capitalise on an unprecedented opportunity by examining entire systems affecting indigenous disadvantage in higher education. The reviewers had commissioned about 20 pieces of related research to help inform them. Some initial evidence indicated grade 12 completions by indigenous students were substantially increasing in some jurisdictions, yet few of the students were entering university. “We want people to be truthful, to say this is what the state of play is,” said Larkin. “We understand this whole thing is multi-layered. It’s not about trying to attribute fault or blame; it’s about this is where we all think the best points of intervention are, this is how we should do it, and let’s go forward.” Rigney said results from NAPLAN (National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy) were not good enough to suggest indigenous students would graduate in “droves” over the next 10 years. “What we constantly have across the country, in fact, is Aboriginal students not graduating with an ATAR score, and they aren’t coming directly into university,” he said. “They either have to go via a career or job, or they have to come in via an enabling course. This speaks volumes as to where some of the contemporary problems will be as we go forward.” Nonetheless, with positive reforms such as deregulation imminent, the review was timely. It represented an exciting time for indigenous higher education, which didn’t see its first undergraduate until 1967. “We do want Aboriginal curriculum and knowledge and experiences to be built into the university, not just bolted onto the university through an Aboriginal centre. We expect this review will say something coherently about embedding indigenous knowledge across the entire university,” Rigney said. Submissions to the Behrendt review close on November 18. More information on how to make a submission is available here.