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Notes -
This was my impression too, but recently I was looking at the NAPLAN results* and I was surprised at how poorly Indigenous students** actually did. For every test I looked at, Indigenous major city students did significantly worse than even Non-Indigenous very remote (for both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous the percentage "passing" decreases from major city to regional and further again to remote). More specifically the below percentages include students who were "Strong" or "Exceeding" (and excludes students in the other categories of "Developing", "Needs additional support" and "Exempt").
Year 3 (approx 8.5 years old) Numeracy scores
Indigenous major city - 37.3%
Non-Indigenous very remote - 50.3%
All the other grades and subjects showed similar results, e.g.
Year 9 (approx 14.5 years old) Reading scores
Indigenous major city - 35.3%
Non-Indigenous very remote - 50%
Unrelated to this thread, another possibly surprising result from NAPLAN is that students with a language background other than English (LBOTE) (either the student or parents/carers speak a language other than English at home) do better than non-LBOTE on every single test at every grade level, including English/Language arts (e.g. 71% vs 56.5% in grade 3 spelling). Based on Australian demographics, many LBOTE students would have Asian ancestry.
In less surprising news, boys did better than girls at numeracy (e.g. 67% vs 62.1% in grade 3), girls did better than boys at English/Language arts (e.g. 71.4% vs 62.4% in grade 3 reading), major city kids did better than very remote kids (e.g. 69.5 vs 50.3% in grade 3 numeracy for non-Indigenous), and kids with at least one parent who have a bachelor did MUCH better than kids where the highest level either parent had achieved was grade 11 (e.g. 79.6% vs 31% in grade 3 numeracy).
*NAPLAN is "a series of tests focused on basic skills that are administered to Australian students in year 3, 5, 7 and 9." On that page, click "Achievement by subgroup" then the "Comparison by" dropdown on the right to get to "Indigeneity by ABS remoteness"
** Defined by NAPLAN as "one who identifies as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin", therefore presumably including the mixed-race city dwellers.
Ah, good call. Thanks for looking up the data and keeping me honest.
I'm not particularly surprised by LBOTE results - statistically most LBOTEs are likely to be immigrants or first-generation children of immigrants, which is a group that's going to be selected slightly more for talent. I'm not sure I'd attribute it mostly to Asian background, or at least, certainly not East Asian background. These are NSW figures from 2021, and on page 4 they have a chart of non-English native languages. The biggest single one is actually Arabic, and Indian languages are overall more common than Chinese languages. I don't know whether you included Indian when you said 'Asian', but certainly for me, when I hear 'Asian' I think Chinese or East Asian, and those are very different cultural spheres. At any rate, the LBOTE/non-LBOTE gap is quite small and equalises or reverses in a few domains, so I'm not too stressed about it. Immigrants usually do slightly better on most metrics just from selection effects, and Australia's immigration process prioritises the skilled and successful.
On Aboriginals specifically... so the regions do worse than the cities on every metric. I can't see how to cross-reference indigenous status with urban or regional status on the website, but I suppose I can get an inkling of it by comparing NT indigenous figures (which will be mostly regional) with ACT figures (which will be urban). The NT indig-non-indig gap is significantly larger than the ACT gap on every metric, often twice as large, which seems consonant with the idea that regional Aboriginal people are significantly worse off than urban Aboriginals - though even urban Aboriginals are still doing worse than urban non-indigenous people.
So I accept correction on the claim that the urban indigenous cohort generally have similar outcomes to comparable non-indigenous people. They are generally better-off that indigenous people in the regions (as this summary notes, p. 8-9), but still lagging behind non-Aboriginal people.
You're probably right that selecting immigrants who are skilled is a better explanation for LBOTE doing better than non-LBOTE.
Yep, it's hard to navigate and I stumble upon it accidentally from https://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia/naplan-national-results the bubble "Achievement by subgroup" then the "Comparison by" dropdown on the right to get to "Indigeneity by ABS remoteness". Definitely remote are significantly worse off than urban Aboriginals.
Percent strong or exceeding for Year 9 reading:
Indigenous major city - 35.3%
Indigenous inner regional - 29.9%
Indigenous outer regional - 25.1%
Indigenous remote - 15.7%
Indigenous very remote - 8.5%
Non-Indigenous major city - 68.3%
Non-Indigenous inner regional - 57.2%
Non-Indigenous outer regional - 55.3%
Non-Indigenous remote - 55.7%
Non-Indigenous very remote - 50%
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