The federal government this week unveiled the National Agreement on Closing the

Gap. Under the strategy, all Australian governments committed to 16 targets, three
of which are directly related to early childhood and school education.

They are:

 to increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children

enrolled in early childhood education to 95% by 2025.
 to increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children
assessed as developmentally on track in all five domains (physical health and well-
being, social competence, emotional maturity, language and cognitive skills,
communication skills and general knowledge) of the Australian Early
Development Census (AEDC) to 55% by 2031.
 to increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
(aged 20-24) with a year 12 or equivalent qualification to 96% by 2031.

These new targets have been determined by Aboriginal people themselves. But

there are some things they miss, including the way success is measured.

Read more: New 'Closing the Gap' targets will cover attachment to land and
culture

A blunt instrument
The population-level data the AEDC provides is supposed to tell us about the
school readiness of all Australian children across the five developmental areas
outlined earlier. In 2018, 35% of Indigenous children were deemed to be
developmentally on track, compared with 57% of non-Indigenous children.

Yet we know the display of developmental traits is complex, situational and

subject to cultural bias. Some items in the in the census are subject to individual
teacher judgements — such as, “Would you say this child is interested in
mathematics?”