Attendance and learning for indigenous students

Different people have different learning techniques and style. When teachers are trying to give student the most effective education possible it is important to first consider what the learning style and techniques students have in order to provide the environment that gives students the opportunity to utilize what they are good at. Not only does by doing this help students to encode new informations easily but also boost students motivation in learning so that they are more unlikely to get distracted by things around them. In relation to the education of indigenous people, they have the highest truancy rate in schools than people from another community and background. Therefore as educators we need to ask ourselves what causes this problem, what can we do to motivate indigenous students to go to school and minimise their distractions. In relation to this topic of question, i have found two piece of news article which contains arguments against each other.

The first piece of article, in fact a news reported by ABC news, on wednesday September 18 argues that an improvement in attendants for indigenous people does not mean a better result in education and that it is important that we look away from the national standards and focus on a new approach that solve this problem by researching creative ways that boosts their motivation in learning instead of their attendance. In order to boost students motivation in learning we should, as argue by John Houlsey interviewed in the news, look at how and what children are learning in their context such as "...out in the community, out in the bush, in ceremonies....." For more information of the news check out this link: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-18/new-approach-urged-for-indigenous-education/4966744 

In the second article we can see a completely different point of view from the first one in relation to the problem of indigenous truancy because this article supports the idea of good attendance equals to good educational results. In this article it is being mentioned that in order to solve the truancy problem of indigenous students it is important that some kind of enforcement should be applied. In the article it is reported that in order to improve the attendance of indigenous students Mr Abbott and the coalitions decided to appoint truancy officers to give out fines to indigenous family that fails to see their kids to school. More information can be found here: http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1368038/abbott-to-appoint-truancy-officers-to-indigenous-areas/

For me personally I agree with the first article because I believe that motivation in learning is what causes truancy. Therefore even if we are able to decrease the truancy rate without having the motivation to learn students can still choose to not pay attention in class and hence are not able to achieve a better result. I understand that sometimes it is very important to get people to school and that the good intentions behind Mr Abbott's policy, but personally i believe that it is a more effective approach to search for ways to get students motivated in going to school in the first place instead of enforcing it because after all we the reason that we want children to attend school is because we want them to learn.

Reference:
 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-18/new-approach-urged-for-indigenous-education/4966744 

http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1368038/abbott-to-appoint-truancy-officers-to-indigenous-areas/