Acceleration of digital communication has changed the nature of reading and young people today need to engage multimodal skills for reading success in the digital world. While historically there have been social justice issues for marginalised students in terms of reading, the digital age is creating new equity issues across the globe. This…

This article examines the extent to which parental socioeconomic status (SES) affects the likelihood of a child becoming a top-performing student, offering an international perspective by reporting this relationship in 31 developed countries. The impact of 3 important educational system characteristics (differentiation in terms of early tracking,…

Australian Aboriginal children, in general, lag behind their mainstream peers in measures of literacy. This article discusses some of the complex and interconnected factors that impact Aboriginal children's early language and literacy development. Poor health and historically negative socio-political factors are known influences on Aboriginal…

Much of the literature on university access and participation positions people from disadvantaged backgrounds as those who have not 'traditionally' attended university. Certain student cohorts are presented as lacking the skills or requisite knowledges to achieve academic success, requiring additional assistance from institutions to address these…

There has been increasing access to higher education enrolment for disadvantaged individuals following the Bradley Review of Australian higher education. While progress has been made, students from equity groups are still found to lag behind their privileged counterparts in completing higher education. This study examines higher education academic…

The discourse of remote education is often characterised by a rhetoric of disadvantage. This is reflected in statistics that on the surface seem unambiguous in their demonstration of poor outcomes for remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. A range of data support this view, including National Assessment Program-Literacy and…

This report supplements Jerrim (2012) where John Jerrim investigated the link between family background and children's reading tests across a series of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Previous studies for the Sutton Trust (Smithers 2012) have suggested that policy and provision for the highly able in…

For quite some time the achievements of students in remote Australian schools have been lamented. There is not necessarily anything new about the relative difference between the results of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in remote communities and their counterparts in urban, regional and rural schools across Australia. However, in…

It is the aim of this article to provoke debate and encourage greater scrutiny regarding the use and meaning of the expression "Indigenous education" within the discursive practices, research and policy in Australian education. Drawing on Hall's (2007) development of ideas from Foucault that give rise to "Indigenous education"…

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in Australian schools continue to have poor education and health outcomes, and the introduction of a new national curriculum may assist in redressing this situation. This curriculum emphasises recommendations which have been circulating in the sector over many years, to require teacher education…

The recent release of the Gonski Review recognises the decline in Australia's schooling performances over the last decade, noting in particular a distressing increase in the "achievement gap" affecting students from low SES backgrounds (Gonski, 2012). The report details the need for more quality in teachers throughout the schooling…

The Closing the Gap Clearinghouse was established by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) to bring together evidence-based research on overcoming disadvantage for Indigenous Australians. The Clearinghouse provides access to a collection of information on what works to improve Indigenous people's lives across the building blocks identified…