ACT students are significantly ahead of their state and territory counterparts on almost all educational measures under the first national baseline performance report prepared by the Council of Australian Governments.
But Australia's performance in literacy and numeracy is slipping internationally and indigenous students are lagging years behind their non-indigenous classmates, according to the COAG Reform Council, which issued almost 300 pages of national educational and skills comparisons yesterday.
The reports are part of the Rudd Government's National Education Agreements with the states and territories as part of an overhaul of educational outcomes, accountability and greater performance transparency.
COAG Reform Council chairman Paul McClintock said some of the report findings ''ring bells'' in terms of the need for immediate action.
''All of the data in relation to the status of indigenous Australians in both the education and skills report have to be very concerning to any Australian who looks at them,'' he said.
In the ACT, the proportion of students who achieved at or above the national minimum standard in the National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy was significantly above the national average for reading, writing and numeracy and across year levels 3, 5, 7 and 9. ACT students edged out their classmates across the country on every measure except Year 5 writing in which NSW had a higher proportion of students above the national minimum.
The proportion of the 20- to 24-year-olds in the ACT who achieved Year 12 or equivalent was 90.6 per cent the best in the nation and above the national average of 82.8 per cent. The ACT's proportion of young people aged 18 to 24 in full-time employment, education and training was also the highest in the nation at 81.3 per cent, above the national average of 72.4 per cent. The COAG report acknowledged the ACT's strong performance across all selected indicators but noted Canberra's very low proportion of people with low socio-economic status. According to Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas, 73 per cent of the ACT population is in the highest and least disadvantaged quintile. Only 0.2 per cent of the population is in the bottom quintile and only 2 per cent of students are indigenous.
COAG warns of ''a clear relationship between levels of socio-economic disadvantage'' and educational disadvantage leading to lower Year 12 attainment rates and workforce participation. It identified the Northern Territory as the most socio-economically disadvantaged jurisdiction, followed by South Australia and Tasmania.
Indigenous students were the most disadvantaged in the country recording the lowest level of school attendance, lowest achievement in literacy and numeracy, low Year 12 graduations and lowest post-school training or employment.
There was an average 20 per cent lag in the number of indigenous students reaching the minimum literacy and numeracy standards compared with non-indigenous students and only 47.4 per cent completed Year 12 compared with a national average of 82.8 per cent.
When Australia's performance is measured against other countries using the Program for International Assessment results, indigenous students are found to be approximately 212 years behind non-indigenous students in reading, maths and science.
The report found that while achievement across Australia was internationally competitive, the country's performance was slipping.
''There is evidence ... that Australia's performance is not improving over time relative to other countries. In particular there has been a significant decline in Australia's mean scores in reading literacy between PISA 2000 and PISA 2006,'' the report said.
Mr McClintock said the report highlighted severe shortfalls when it came to indigenous education.
One particularly shocking statistic was that young indigenous Australians were now less likely to achieve minimum level qualifications than 30 years ago a reversal of the trend among non-indigenous Australians.
''It is very confronting to think you have the same proportion of indigenous people in their 20s with the same lack of skills as those in their 50s.'' he said.
Mr McClintock said the size of the achievement gap between black and white Australia set the Rudd Government a tough task in its stated aim of halving the difference in indigenous disadvantage.
The reform council has made recommendations around the collection of future data on education, pointing to some substantial gaps and flaws in current collections. They include more consistent and nationally comparable data on school attendance, better tracking of socio-economic status among students to measure how much schooling could reduce educational disadvantage, closer monitoring of post-school education and employer satisfaction, and national performance figures from TAFEs and universities.