Thriving Future - Strong Together: Closing the Gap in Indigenous Outcomes

Team Name

The D4taholics

Team Members

Project Description

Background

Australia is a multicultural country with residents from diverse ethnicities and backgrounds. This is one of the reasons why Australia is considered a vibrant and culturally rich nation.

Over time, the government has demonstrated great effort in development and in reducing the gap between Indigenous peoples and the wider community.

A significant initiative is The National Agreement on Closing the Gap, which outlines 19 national socio-economic targets across critical areas that impact life outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Closing the Gap acknowledges the ongoing strength and resilience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in sustaining the world’s oldest living cultures.

Despite multiple efforts and billions of dollars invested to achieve these 19 targets, the reality shows that not all targets are on track. Data reveals that only 4 out of 19 targets are currently progressing well, while the situation in other areas is worsening. These include:

• Adult imprisonment
  
• Children in out-of-home care
  
• Suicide rates
  
• Children’s developmental progress
  

Problem Statement

“Children today lead the world of tomorrow.” The future is in the hands of today’s generation. Therefore, we focus on creating strong foundations of hope, education, and sustainable values that can be passed on to future generations within their community.

However, the Australian government faces a paradox: according to Closing the Gap data, preschool enrolment is increasing, but the rate of children thriving (meeting developmental milestones by the time they start primary school) is decreasing.

Factors contributing to lower attendance rates include:

- Nomadic lifestyles cause interrupted schooling

- Health issues

Why does this paradox exist?

Fluctuating attendance rates, as well as other interrupting factors in children’s study, have a strong impact on children's developmental on-track rate.

The direct causes of declining children’s thriving rates include the factors above. Additionally, we believe that these negatively trending targets are closely interrelated, forming a cycle of disadvantage.

Objectives

• Closing the educational gap by applying digital technology: With the advancement of digital technology today, it has become a powerful tool to support students in studying effectively and optimally, regardless of adverse circumstances. Early familiarity with how to use and apply technology will help students integrate it into their lives, thereby not only assisting individual students to maximise their potential but also increasing the likelihood of securing job opportunities in the future.
  
• Closing the cultural gap: Through this project, we aim to take a step forward in fostering understanding and respect from diverse groups, including Indigenous communities and wider Australian societies.
  

Solutions

To close the educational and cultural gaps sustainably, we must take bold steps to break the chains that have existed for too long. These solutions must be concrete, practical and have a lasting impact. The directions and solutions we propose include:

• Infrastructures:
  
  Infrastructure needs to be invested to improve the quality and stability of the internet, especially in remote areas. The limitations of the current infrastructure become even more apparent when they are used during the rainy season.
  
  Build regular supplementary classes/workshops, led by well-trained teachers or professional staff.
  
  The main goal is to gradually turn technology into an essential part of education and life, helping children and the community get closer to the 4.0 technology era

• Proposed policies on human resources:
  
  Issue policies to encourage learning and support scholarships for students with excellent achievements. This is an encouraging reward for even the smallest of student efforts.
  
  Policies to attract quality human resources (teachers, social workers, etc.) need to be improved.

• Tools - Digital platform
  
  We propose a learning solution that helps students gain deeper and stronger connections to the culture and identity of the local community.
  
  We built the platform from the perspective that Australia is a country that loves children, and the government always wants to care for and invest in the quality of students' learning. In the laws on protecting the rights of children in Australia, students are taught in classes corresponding to their age. This reality is sometimes one of the reasons that creates a gap in real level and difference between peers and other groups of residents.
  
  The proposed solution to solve this situation is a platform where students can self-study and make up for missed lessons through lively lectures designed specifically to be friendly to students and children. Without having to move, students can always study right from their homes.

The prominent features that will be available in the platform will include:

- Track learning progress and reward system for completing lessons as a challenge. This underlying gamification mechanism will always keep students motivated to learn, maintaining good learning habits.

- Content on the platform will always be carefully selected and age-appropriate. We will create rich, lively, friendly and culturally relevant content for students.

Conclusion

Children are the future of the country, and we believe that even the smallest disruption deprives children of a chance to develop. The surrounding environment must be a healthy place for children to play, to sing and to learn good things. Children also need comprehensive health care so that they can develop healthily. To achieve a great common goal, it requires a lot of contributions from each individual in society.

Data Story

Data Story – Key Findings

https://www.pc.gov.au/closing-the-gap-data/dashboard/se/outcome-area4

https://www.pc.gov.au/closing-the-gap-data/dashboard/se/outcome-area3

https://www.pc.gov.au/closing-the-gap-data/dashboard/se/outcome-area12

https://www.pc.gov.au/closing-the-gap-data/dashboard/se/outcome-area10

Preschool enrolment is rising, yet child thriving outcomes are falling.

Key targets such as imprisonment, out-of-home care, and suicide rates are strongly connected and influence child development.

If even one of these critical issues can be addressed, other interrelated problems may also improve significantly.

Data story – Key findings

• Attendance rates vary sharply by remoteness. In very remote areas, school attendance often drops below 60%, limiting children’s opportunities from the start.
  
• Across states, the proportion of children developmentally on track is lowest in the Northern Territory, highlighting deep inequalities compared to other regions.
  

- Higher imprisonment closely aligns with more children in out-of-home care, showing how these systems are linked.

- As more children are removed from their families, fewer are assessed as developmentally on track. Family stability matters for thriving outcomes.

• Regression estimates show downward trends in several states. Without targeted action, developmental outcomes are projected to decline further by 2031.

• The developmental gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children remains stark, with some states showing especially wide disparities.