Health Determinants and Educational Outcomes for Indigenous Children

It is well established that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children suffer high rates of both acute and chronic childhood illnesses. It is also well established that their level of academic achievement remains well below that of their non-Indigenous peers. This chapter’s focus is on answering the question of how these two dimensions of socio-health and wellbeing are related. This chapter uses data from the K cohort from LSIC Wave 6 to investigate the relationship between health and education. We found that both individual and family-level health determinants have an adverse affect on educational attainment among children at this age level (mean age of 9 years old). The aim is to make manifest the interaction between health and wellbeing and educational outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and their families.