Freeman, Leonard, and Wigglesworth, Gillian (2020) Standardized Testing and School Achievement: The Case of Indigenous-Language-Speaking Students in Remote Australia. In: Mirhosseini, Seyyed-Abdolhamid, and De Costa, Peter I., (eds.) The Sociopolitics of English Language Testing. Bloomsbury Academic, London, UK, pp. 23-45.

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Abstract

The Indigenous population of Australia comprises only around 3 percent of the total population, and their outcomes on various measures including life expectancy, health, and education are well below those of the general population. It is common practice for government reports in Australia to disaggregate their reporting of these important outcomes by Indigenous status thus making the deficit positioning of Indigenous peoples on these measures highly visible to governments and the wider population. In 2008, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) reacted to the disparity between the outcomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians by setting up targets around these measures in a commitment to “Close the Gap.” These targets included halving the gap in reading, writing, and numeracy for Indigenous children within a decade. The prime minister reports annually on the Closing the Gap initiative. At the same time, 2008 saw the first administration of the National Assessment Program— Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLaN)—a measure used by governments, education authorities, schools, and the community to determine the educational outcomes of young Australians (ACARA, 2011a), discussed further below. The first reported results in 2008 indicated large differences in the performance of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, with the former performing increasingly less well depending on how remotely they lived from a major city (see Avineri et al., 2015, for a broader international discussion of these issues).

Item ID:	86496
Item Type:	Book Chapter (Research - B1)
ISSN:	978-1-3500-7135-3
Keywords:	school attendance; assessment; Australian Aboriginal students; multilingualism
Copyright Information:	© Bloomsbury Academic, 2020
Date Deposited:	14 Aug 2025 03:15
FoR Codes:	39 EDUCATION > 3904 Specialist studies in education > 390402 Education assessment and evaluation @ 100%
SEO Codes:	16 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 1602 Schools and learning environments > 160201 Equity and access to education @ 50% 16 EDUCATION AND TRAINING > 1603 Teaching and curriculum > 160301 Assessment, development and evaluation of curriculum @ 50%
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