Increasing Urban Indigenous Students' Attendance: Mitigating the Influence of Poverty through Community Partnership

This research explores school attendance rates within the steadily growing population of Victorian urban Indigenous students and challenges for realising high attendance levels. Poverty, pervasive throughout the urban Indigenous community, presents circumstances where it once, and could still, erode regular school attendance. We report one socio-educationally disadvantaged school, teaching a significant Indigenous student population that has mitigated the influence of socio-economic disadvantage. Their Indigenous students' attendance surpasses the attendance of most Indigenous students and almost matches that of their non-Indigenous school peers. Success has been achieved through community partnerships, supported by a Koorie Education Worker, and embedded Indigenous culture. However, in the final primary school year, Indigenous students' attendance declines. This signals an earlier commencement of attendance decline that occurs in later years, often resulting in early attrition. As the school's targeted strategies and programmes have improved all students' attendance, so the attendance gap for Indigenous students persists.