Push to Close the Gap

TASMANIA’S incoming education minister needs to provide the resources to meet Closing the Gap targets and address Aboriginal educational disadvantage, Reconciliation Tasmania says.

The most recent figures from Canberra show targets to halve the gap in child mortality and to enrol 95 per cent of four-year-old’s in early childhood education are on track.

But there is still work to do to improve Year 12 attainment, literacy and numeracy levels, school attendance, employment and life expectancy among Tasmania’s indigenous population.

Data from the Productivity Commission shows that in 2015-2016, 76.4 per cent of Aboriginal people aged between 20-24 in Tasmania had attained Year 12 or equivalent.

This rate dropped to 66.6 per cent last financial year.

In comparison, 81.2 per cent of non-Aboriginal Tasmanians in the same age group had reached the milestone last financial year.

Co-chair of Reconciliation Tasmania Fiona Hughes said addressing educational disadvantage needed to be adequately resourced.

Ms Hughes also called on private and public employers to also play their part and prepare Reconciliation Action Plans and provide employment opportunities for Aboriginal Tasmanians.

“We need to get this right, so that Aboriginal people share the prosperity of modern Australia,” Ms Hughes said.

Tomorrow is National Close the Gap Day, designed to empower Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to live healthy and prosperous lives and close the gap — the difference in outcomes for ATSI peoples and the general population.

In February, 2016, after the release of the Closing the Cap report, the State Government said Tasmania was one of only three jurisdictions on track to close the gap on school attendance.

No states or territories met that target in the latest progress report.