In late 2013, under the leadership of Prime Minister Abbott, the Australian Government announced a new policy designed to increase attendance rates in remote community schools--the Remote School Attendance Strategy (RSAS). The model assumed that employing local people in the program, which was designed to support parents get their children to…

The COVID-19 pandemic has had broad ranging impacts on the delivery of education at universities. In this context, hybrid-flexible teaching, or HyFlex (HF), has been offered at my university as a mode of delivery ostensibly suitable to what is ultimately a disrupted teaching environment. HF involves the delivery of a subject simultaneously in…

Over the 10 years of 'Closing the Gap', several interventions designed to improve outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students have been trialled. In 2014 the Australian Government announced the 'Flexible Literacy for Remote Primary Schools Programme' (FLFRPSP) which was designed primarily to improve the literacy outcomes of…

Australia has made tremendous progress in building a better early childhood education and care (ECEC) system to serve all Australian children and families. Substantial data already exists about ECEC services in Australia, including access, participation and quality. Large-scale data sets are held by governments (state and federal), research…

Australian and international research documents the limited access of young people transitioning from out-of-home care (OOHC) to further and higher education. This paper examines the processes, outcomes, and key findings of the Raising Expectations project, a collaborative university and industry approach to promote higher education among care…

Short term experimental studies by DiPerna and colleagues have demonstrated the efficacy of the Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS) to measure and improve the social skills and academic functioning of students from Preparatory year to Grade 3 and to decrease problem behaviours. This longitudinal school-led project applied the multi-tiered…

Early years are a critical period for skill development. In this sense, the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) programmes have an important role in promoting children's learning during this period. This study aimed to explore the effectiveness of ECEC programmes by analysing the relationship between students' ECEC attendance and their later…

Early College High Schools and Early College Entrance Programs offer college material to students who are ready for it before they reach the traditional age to begin college enrollment. With the goal of addressing concerns related to the success of these programs and their impact on affective development among students, a systematic review and…

For youth in disadvantaged schools, university expectations and participation are often limited by access to social and cultural capital that support expectations. This study investigated the utility of creative arts outreach initiatives (CAI) in supporting students' university expectations and building cultural capital in homes, schools and…

Sport-based mentoring programs have been used across many contexts to engage young people in education. In this research, we explored the influence that an Aboriginal controlled organisation's youth mentoring program has on three remote Aboriginal communities in Northern Territory, Australia. We used a composite set of culturally sensitive methods…

This article reports on the student benefits of a school-based Hip Hop and beat making program. While a significant amount of literature has reported the benefits of Hip Hop programs in North American schools, comparatively little is known about the benefits of such programs in the Australian context. Using an ethnographic approach, this study…

Coping skills provide a resource for tackling stress in everyday situations, including those relating to parenting. The aim of this article is to establish whether parents who experienced a 10-hour universal social emotional parenting program--Families Coping (FC)--benefit through increased productive coping strategies, decreased nonproductive…

Many studies have highlighted the capacity of community arts programs to re-engage those young people considered at-risk of disconnection from future education and/or employment. "Evolution" is an artist-guided visual arts program established for young people challenged by mental health and social issues that aims to foster re-engagement…

As part of an innovative tutorial structure introduced to a first year university mathematics subject, an attendance monitoring system was implemented. The system collected data that was used to investigate the relationship between student attendance and assessment performance which is reported here. The implementation of this system also assisted…

Reduced school attendance is a recognised risk factor for poorer outcomes both educationally and across a wide range of social, economic and personal indicators throughout life. Children and young people with chronic health conditions often have poor or disrupted records of school attendance due to periods of hospitalisation and time spent…