We hear it all the time — education is the key to success, so what options are there when the decks are still stacked against your child?

The gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in reading and numeracy was meant to be halved by 2018, but that target is nowhere near being met.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students all too often fall behind their non-Indigenous counterparts at school.

One Aboriginal mother has turned to homeschooling as a way of making sure her children do not get left behind in the classroom.

And other Indigenous mothers are taking note.

Larteasha Griffen is a Dunghutti woman from Kempsey on the Mid North Coast of NSW.

She and her husband are raising their three children, newborn Zoe, Sadie, who is two, and five-year-old Amity, in Western Sydney.

Larteasha Griffen says she wants her children to be proud of who they are. ( ABC News: Mawunyo Gbogbo )

Amity wants to be a doctor when she grows up, and her mother wants her to know she can do anything she sets her mind to.

Closing the Gap report card Not on track Life expectancy: Close the gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a generation

Close the gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a generation Employment: Halve the gap in employment by 2018

Halve the gap in employment by 2018 Reading and writing: Halve the gap in reading and numeracy for Indigenous students by 2018

Halve the gap in reading and numeracy for Indigenous students by 2018 School attendance: Close the gap in school attendance by the end of 2018 On track Child mortality rates: To halve the gap in mortality rates for Indigenous children under five within a decade (by 2018)

To halve the gap in mortality rates for Indigenous children under five within a decade (by 2018) Early education: 95 per cent of all Indigenous four-year-olds enrolled in early childhood education by 2025

95 per cent of all Indigenous four-year-olds enrolled in early childhood education by 2025 Year 12 attainment: Halve the gap in Year 12 attainment by 2020

She and her husband have made a decision to educate their daughter at home for a number of reasons.

"We decided to homeschool, not just for faith and philosophical reasons, but because we wanted to really have a deeper understanding of our child's education," Ms Griffen said.

"What that means for us is to be able to mould and shape the things that she's learning, to include our culture into her learning."

Ms Griffen said she wanted her children to be proud of who they are and where they are from.

"One of the main things that we want to do is collect stories from our elders," she said.

"And I think this is so important because we've lost so much in terms of language, in terms of the stories that have been passed down.

"It's really important that our young people can hear these stories and put it into their learning because if we don't we'll lose it forever.

"And our young people are so interested; they want to learn about their culture, they want to know about their identity."

Ms Griffen says Indigenous children want to learn about their culture. ( ABC News: Mawunyo Gbogbo )

Indigenous children 'treated differently'

Ms Griffen and her husband were both educated in public schools in Australia.

As a student, she saw Aboriginal children being treated differently.

"When we first started high school, I noticed all of the Koori kids were put into the lower classes," Ms Griffen said.

"And they might say that this was from their report cards from primary school, or from a test.

"But that says a lot to Koori kids.

"It says to them that this is what society thinks of me, this is how I'm supposed to be for the rest of my life, I'm at the bottom, I'm not smart.

"And that plays such a huge part in a child's confidence and how they're going to deal with education for their rest of their lives."

Ms Griffen has faced some criticism for her family's decision, with people questioning whether her child would be denied opportunities to socialise with other children.

"We've been told homeschooling's weird," she said.

"It's only for weird people because it's not the norm.

"It's not normal. Especially for us mob."

Ms Griffen said she and her husband were planning to address the socialising issue by getting the children involved in team sports, and meeting up with other homeschooling groups.

"We have church as well, they have loads and loads of cousins and friends, I think they'll be fine," she said.

"Us Koori mob, we have such big families, so they are never without a cousin who comes over or a family friend they can hang out with."

Ms Griffen said she wanted other parents to be encouraged by her efforts and know they could take control of their child's education.

"I want the best for her [Amity], more than anybody in this world," she said.

"And that's what I say to the people who are criticising me, because they don't love my child more than me.

"And if homeschooling is right for us, then I'm going to keep going.

"If it's not, then that's totally fine. I'll try something new. But this is about trying to find what's right for my daughter."

Larteasha Griffen says Indigenous culture risks being lost if it is not passed on to children. ( ABC News: Mawunyo Gbogbo )

School resistant to including Aboriginal culture

Nola Turner-Jensen, a Wiradjuri woman from western New South Wales who currently lives on the Gold Coast, has been home-schooling her son Liam, now 16, since he was in the third grade.

"We're an oral culture and you go into a text-based education system and already Aboriginal children struggle. And any group-mindset child who comes from an oral culture struggles, and so this enabled my son to be able to work out problems verbally as we have done for thousands of years," she said.

Ms Turner-Jensen said the homeschooling of her son happened by accident, after she pulled him out of a private school.

"He wasn't enjoying it, and also I was struggling with the fact that I was trying to introduce Aboriginal culture into the school and they weren't very receptive to that even though I was offering it to them for free and offering to organise it," she said.

"And that really gave me a red flag that perhaps this is not the school for me.

"When I confronted the school about this — about how it's important that my son's culture is represented at this school and that he's not enjoying the school — they told me it was my fault and suggested a new way of parenting."

Ms Turner-Jensen said she had noticed a significant change in her son's attitude to education since she began homeschooling him.

"I watched my intelligent child go from someone who had anxiety and was really struggling with a text-based system to someone who loved learning and couldn't get enough of it," she said.

"So I just thought, what am I doing? This is amazing. Since then I've just become a huge advocate for homeschooling because it transferred my son into a life-long learner who just loves learning now, and he's self-motivated."

Decades later, Aboriginal culture still in the margins

Since she started writing a blog about her experience, Ms Griffen said she has been approached by 10 other Indigenous mothers, half of whom were seriously considering homeschooling their own kids.

Peter Buckskin, the Dean of Aboriginal Engagement and Strategic Projects at the University of South Australia, said he recalled his own experience as a child at school where his Indigenous culture and knowledge were very much at the margins, if mentioned at all.

"I'm a bit sad that mothers and caregivers feel that their child is not being valued as an individual learner, as an Aboriginal child, and therefore they think they can look after their cultural needs better, in a safer environment, by keeping them at home," he said.

Professor Buckskin said the education system was still failing to adequately cater to Indigenous Australians.

"I've been part of a movement for nearly 30-something years where we've been trying to make the Australian schooling system much more culturally responsive to the needs of Australia's first peoples," he said.

He said Aboriginal history and culture needed to be embedded in the school curriculum across subjects, and teachers should receive training on how to interact with culturally diverse students.

"There is a real need — I hear this consistently — for increased professional learning about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners," he said.

"And our classrooms today are much different than they were 30 years ago; they're much more culturally diverse.

"And therefore teachers need to be able to teach to that diversity and to understand the children they have in front of them, and particularly they need to understand the history of the first Australians."

He said things were moving in the right direction, but progress had been slow.