A key passion of mine is ensuring equity in education – from early years to tertiary education. Too many children start school behind their peers – 1 in 5 on average but the statistics vary tremendously from community to community.
I have spent some time since the release of the 2018 Australian Early Development Census analysing statistics on how children are faring, and been startled to see the large, and in some cases growing, gap between communities. See my Pursuit article for further insights on this.
The gap between rural, regional and metropolitan Australia has also been troubling me. I was surprised to see how many students miss at least a month of school per year – around a quarter of government high school students and almost half of high school students in remote areas. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students fare even worse.
Today the Productivity Commission has released a new report on the Demand Driven Higher Education system which shows, amongst other findings, that demand driven funding did not seem to encourage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and rural and remote students to embrace higher education.
Given the statistics above I am not surprised – we need to start early and consistently support students if we want them to thrive across the system. I’m thrilled to be able to speak to this at the report launch at 11:30 today.
Livestream viewing is available here
My slideshow is here
Megan O'Connell Consulting 
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