Literacy learning: What Works for Young Indigenous Students??

The Longitudinal Literacy and Numeracy Study for Indigenous Students (ILLANS) tracked the growth in literacy and numeracy skills of a group of Indigenous students from 27 schools across Australia from the beginning of primary school until the end of Year 6. At the time the study was conceived, longitudinal studies on the school achievement of Indigenous students were comparatively rare. A desire to develop a broader picture of primary school experiences motivated data collection that included a range of other data from a variety of informants in addition to academic achievement data. ILLANS commenced in 2000, with the first phase of the study (2000–2002) reported in the monograph Supporting English literacy and numeracy learning for Indigenous students in the early years (Frigo et al., 2003). This article is a summary of the main findings from Phase 2 of the study (2003–2006) reported in the monograph Literacy and Numeracy learning: Lessons from the Longitudinal Literacy and Numeracy Study for Indigenous Students (Purdie et al., 2011).