Soft Marking and Indigenous Education

If I saw him barely half a dozen times, Kevin remains wedged in my memory. He had signed up for a weekly tutorial group I taught—this was in a second-year unit of an arts degree at one of Australia’s top eight universities. Kevin was enrolled as an indigenous student, and he was receiving the best tertiary education our nation had to offer. At least, that’s what was supposed to be occurring.

Class attendance in the subject was strong, although we hardly saw Kevin. Sitting in only three tutorials all year, he missed twenty-one tutorials without explanation. His lecture attendance was worse. Of the twenty-six lectures given annually in our subject, he skipped twenty-four. I knew this because I always sat by the single door just inside the compact lecture theatre, ticking a roll as students entered. Kevin attended only the unit’s introductory first lecture, and made a noisy arrival halfway through another lecture in second semester.

His persistent absences led our…