You learn something new every day

If you've got 10 minutes to spare, download and listen to this podcast on Aboriginal education and employment. I listened to it a few days ago, but let's see if I can recall the salient facts:

• Most Aboriginals live in urban areas (knew that already)
• The Aboriginal workforce participation rate is about 60% - not much lower than non-Aboriginal Australia
• The bottom 150 schools in the country, resulting from the NAPLAN tests, are pretty much all small schools in remote Aboriginal communities. The failure rate is over 70%.
• One problem is not that the kids don't turn up to learn - it's that the teachers don't turn up to teach!
• There are 10,000 adult Aboriginal men in the NT who have finished school and are totally illiterate - they are unemployable
• Low expectations is a big problem
• Poor behaviour and discipline is an even bigger problem
• However, when you compare the performance of dysfunctional, welfare dependent Aboriginal families with dysfunctional, welfare dependent white families, there is almost no gap in performance - both are completely shit.

There was more, but the brain can only absorb so much. Give it a go.