How do we break the vicious cycle of social disadvantage and poor educational outcomes?

Did you know that whilst Australia has a high performing education system overall, it is one of the least equitable in the OECD? Basically the gap between the top and the bottom is far too wide, and what’s worse, it’s growing. The tangled relationship between socio-economic disadvantage and poor educational outcomes has become an urgent problem.

The reasons for this are complex, but essentially, a child’s socio economic circumstances – things they can’t choose like where they live; their parents’ education level; ethnicity and family income – are having too significant an impact on their own educational outcomes, and by virtue, the choices that become available to them later in life. For example:

• If you live in a low-income community, by Year 9 you’re likely to be almost three learning years behind your most privileged peers

• If you’re indigenous, you’ll most likely fail basic literacy tests (7 out of 10 do)

• If you live in a very remote region, more than half of your classmates won’t meet minimum Year 9 reading standards

• Only 15% of university students come from the lowest SES (socio-economic status) quartile, compared to 42% from the top quartile

Educational inequity in Australia is real. It’s happening here, it’s happening now and it’s preventing too many Australian children living the lives they could and should.

It limits the choices they can make, the jobs they can get and the income they can earn. It weakens the families they are a part of and the communities they live in.

It even diminishes the prospects of the children they themselves are yet to have.

We can reject responsibility and leave accidents of demography and geography to plot the future of tens of thousands of Australian children.

Or we can believe that change is possible, and that we can be part of that change.