.svg){kind=icon}
Abstract:
According to national reports on student outcomes, remoteness influences students’ ability to succeed at school. That is, the more remote students are, the more likely they will not succeed. While this holds true for the entire population, it is more noticeable for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Many education stakeholders have conspired for a long time to improve remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student outcomes. The results of these attempts is a set of strategies, programs and interventions that are designed to inspire students to lift their aspirations. It would seem, based on the publicly available data, that despite the effort applied, little has changed in remote community schools over the last seven years. One reason for this, according to data from the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation’s Remote Education Systems (RES) project, is that the strength of local views about what an education should be for, may have been underestimated or not understood by remote education strategy designers. Similarly, how students are inspired in remote community schools may not have been taken into account. Drawing on four years of RES research, this paper will firstly unpack what aspiration and inspiration look like from remote community perspectives. Secondly it will consider the impact of system-wide strategies on remote communities. Finally, the paper will consider how repositioning education in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, not as an issue of geographic remoteness, but as one of cultural distance, might help better shape a system-wide response in the future.
