History, Space and Schooling Among Indigenous Australians

In Australia, Indigenous people on average have lower school achievement levels than other Australians. However, few studies establish the historical and spatial circumstances that have impacted their current schooling experiences and outcomes. This chapter's central argument is that the schooling inequality observed for Indigenous Australians is related to the collective histories they have experienced, and this relationship has, in turn, resulted in ongoing patterns of spatial inequality. The chapter reviews evidence of the links between spatial influences, the current distribution of the Indigenous population, differentiation in systemic factors such as access to the school curriculum and the persistence of schooling inequality among Indigenous people. We argue that more contemporary policies of school marketisation and neoliberalism function as exclusionary pressures by continuing to entrench spatial inequality among Australia's First Nations people.