The Coalition wants to see more Indigenous students go to private schools. Is this a smart idea?

Attila Csaszar/Getty Images The Coalition is signalling it wants to see more disadvantaged Aboriginal students go to private schools.

In a recent speech outlining his approach to education, opposition spokesperson for Indigenous Australians, Julian Leeser, said he wants to see “transformation through school education”.

As part of this, he pointed out how the retention rate of Indigenous students who go on to Year 12 is far higher in private schools than in government schools.

In separate comments to The Conversation this week, he also noted, “my view is pretty simple: we should look at what works and roll it out more broadly”.

I have spent more than a decade researching the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people who attend private schools, particularly boarding schools.

We need to be careful about making assumptions about what works.

What is the Coalition saying? In his speech, Leeser noted how in 2025, the retention rate across all school types from Year 7 through to Year 12 was 83% for non-Indigenous students.

The rate for Indigenous students was 59%.

He noted how retention for Indigenous students was much higher for those who went to private schools, at 91.4%.

It is also higher than the retention rate for non-Indigenous children in private schools (90.2%) and government schools (77.6%).

Leeser asked: “what is it that the non-government schools are doing that is so successful?” Leeser stressed how the private system has more autonomy and flexibility than their government counterparts.

He also pointed to private schools that have opened campuses on Country as well as the importance of philanthropy.

In follow-up comments to The Conversation, he added: In some communities education on Country works brilliantly, but for others boarding school is a great option.

What are we measuring here? The figures Leeser is talking about relate to school retention.