More than 4000 Indigenous Australian students enrol and take up a placement at boarding school each year. While reasons for attending boarding school vary, the impetus for many remote and very remote-dwelling students is restricted secondary educational opportunities in their home communities. A large multi-site study is being undertaken across…

The objective of this paper is to better understand the factors that affect the chances of re-engaging early school leavers in education, with a particular focus on the importance of time out from school (duration dependence) and school-related factors. Using data from three cohorts of the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth and duration…

This paper poses a rarely asked question--Re-engagement to where? Or to what valued social purpose for the young people concerned? Drawing from a larger project funded by the Australian Research Council, the paper analyses the "portraits" of two young people whose lives were seemingly better within a re-engagement programme, but whose…

In Australia, the Youth Allowance (a form of government income support) is being changed to require that most youth under 18 who receive it be engaged in full-time education or training. This change has positive and negative potential impacts on young people, schools, families, technical and further education, adult and community education, and…

The paper discusses some of the issues involved in the transition of students from school to work in Australia. First, there is an overview of the Schools Commission's views on school-work transition as expressed in its reports. The reports draw attention to the necessity for recurrent education to allow every member of society to have access to…