More Indigenous Australians studying at school than ever before: stats

More Indigenous Australians are enrolled in schools than ever before, according to a report on Australian schools from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Friday.

The report showed that 200,563 students from an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island background were enrolled in Australian schools during 2015, up a further 4.2 percent on the figure from 2014.

The figure is also nearly 50 percent higher than the 135,097 Indigenous students who were enrolled in 2005.

The statistics also showed that 60 percent of Indigenous students were graduating from high school -- a figure less than the rate for all students (84 percent), but ABS spokesman Patrick Corr said the increases in Indigenous education and retention rates were still on the rise.

"The increases have been greater in recent years, in part due to the success of programs to improve identification and data collection strategies for this group of students," Corr said in a statement on Friday.

He said universities that offered scholarship programs to Indigenous students who graduate high school has prompted more students to continue their high school education through to the end.

Meanwhile, the number of schools operating in Australia rose by a net figure of 15 -- the first such rise in a decade. Despite the net gain for 2015, the 2015 figure of 9,404 schools is still well below the 2005 figure of 9,623. Endit