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Abstract
Concern about poor school attendance and participation, particularly of Indigenous children, is a key issue in Australian education; however, strategies to address this issue have been piecemeal and have met with limited success. While much has been written about the issue of school attendance, little attention has been given to absenteeism in early childhood education or its effects at this level. Drawing on data from a longitudinal ethnographic study of Indigenous children in early childhood education in an Australian city, this paper examines the impact of intermittent attendance on the academic, social and personal wellbeing of young Aboriginal children. Explanations for non‐attendance, particularly in the non‐compulsory pre‐school, are considered, and the efficacy of current policy trends to coerce parents to deliver children to school by withholding welfare income is challenged. It is argued that because absenteeism in the Indigenous context is part of the broader complex of social exclusion and disadvantage, policy‐makers and service providers, such as the school, are presented particular challenges involving the balancing of competing principles.
Notes
1. As all the children in the study were of Aboriginal descent, the terms Aboriginal and Indigenous are used interchangeably throughout.
2. The three‐year study was undertaken as part of a Visiting Research Fellowship with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra (Australian Capital Territory). In 2009, a faculty grant from Edith Cowan University (WA) enabled the project to be extended for a further year.
3. Seen, for example, in the Council of Australian Governments’ development of an early childhood strategy (Commonwealth of Australia Citation2009c) and learning framework (Commonwealth of Australia Citation2009a ) and the National Indigenous Reform Agreements (Commonwealth of Australia Citation2009b) accompanying the Closing the Gap strategy involving state and territories agreements on, among other areas, early childhood provision for Indigenous children.
4. The survey also found (Centre for Developmental Health Citation2006, 137) an inverse association of absentee rates with student–teacher ratios. An Aboriginal student absence rate of 37.6% was recorded in classrooms in which there were 20 or more students per teacher as opposed to rate of 56% in classrooms where there were 10–15 students per teacher. This rose to over 59% in classrooms where there were less than 10 students per teacher. However, on face value, this seems more likely to be reflecting other factors such as the size and type of school and programme, and the urban/remote factor rather than teacher–student contact per se.
5. The nomenclature varies between states. What is referred to as ‘kindergarten’ in WA, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania is labelled ‘pre‐school’ in the remaining states and territories.
6. See Stamopoulos (Citation2003) for a critique of pedagogical implications of such arrangements following this policy change.
7. Further detail on the study methodology can be found in Taylor (Citation2008).
8. It should also be noted that there were several non‐Indigenous children in similar circumstances with some similarity in attendance patterns.
9. The WAACHS (Centre for Developmental Health Citation2006) study measured ‘academic performance’ by a combination of teacher ratings, Word Definitions and Matrices test results and the Western Australian Literacy and Numeracy Assessment benchmarking results, where these were available. However, the results may not be indicating merely academic gaps and decline as a result of missed time in the instructional setting, but the outcome of other background events and circumstances impacting on a student’s capacity to perform academically in the school setting and possibly underpinning the explanations for missing school in the first place. There is also the question of the standardised tests’ capacity to reflect accurately Indigenous competence, particularly where young children are being tested, given noted cultural variation in socio‐linguistic protocols for seeking and supplying information (see e.g., Eades Citation1988).
10. I have no record, for example, of any of the study children being included in other children’s birthday invitations and heard of only two of them being invited or inviting another for an after‐school play date. It is unlikely that I would not have heard reports from the children of these major events in their social calendars had they been occasionally participating.
11. For an overview of the development of mutual obligation policies, see Edwards (Citation2006).
12. However, five months after the introduction of this ‘tough love arrangement’, the press reported that while 121 parents of children with unacceptable levels of school attendance had been referred to welfare payment agencies, not one payment suspension had been effected (Walker Citation2010).