Indigenous mobility and school attendance in remote Australia: Cause or effect?

Despite claims of a negative impact on Indigenous school attendance due to mobility no attempt has been made to estimate the number of school-age Indigenous children away from a home base at any one time. This paper uses census data to derive such estimates for the first time. It finds that Indigenous children are mostly sedentary within their school catchment area. This suggests that factors other than chronic mobility might be more prominent in accounting for observed outcomes. Could it be that mobility is more a consequence, rather than a cause, of low school attendance? To consider this, data are drawn from a case study of school attendance in the predominantly Aboriginal town of Wadeye in Australia's Northern Territory.

► Census data show that Indigenous children in Australia are mostly sedentary within their school catchment area. ► Despite this school attendance levels are often very low. ► Case study shows poor attendance linked to health, housing, parenting, youth behaviour, inadequacy of infrastructure and school programs. ► Main issue is not about mobility but about community development to re-establish school attendance as accepted practice.