Plan to lift indigenous school attendance

State and territory leaders have agreed to a new plan to get indigenous children to attend school more regularly.

By the end of October they will come up with ways to lift indigenous school attendance where rates are below 80 per cent.

Education department officers will also conduct on-the-spot checks of schools and publicly report twice a year on their efforts.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott used the annual Closing the Gap speech in February to set a new target of lifting indigenous school attendance to the same level as non-indigenous children within five years.

Of the 184,000 indigenous students in Australia, 32 per cent live in NSW, 30 per cent in Queensland and 13 per cent in Western Australia.

Statistics vary across states and school levels, but one of the worst figures is the 55 per cent attendance rate for indigenous Year 10 students in the Northern Territory.

The NT, South Australia and WA have gaps in attendance of greater than 10 percentage points across all year levels.

Mr Abbott said after Friday's COAG meeting in Canberra there was still much more work to do in this area.