ABSTRACT
With ever increasing pressure on the Australian education system to improve its performance in PISA or TIMSS, the flow-on effect is felt by schools around the country as their performance comes under scrutiny through measures such as NAPLAN and Year 12 results. How might this pressure to succeed serve to undermine our efforts with students for whom the mainstream might not suit? Indeed, it’s not uncommon to hear of principals ‘suggesting’ that certain pupils remain at home on the day of NAPLAN, less they pull down the school’s performance. And these are the students who can get to school.
What about those who struggle to get there? Students in temporary accommodation, or who are wards of the state? What about those students who have such a deep mistrust of adults that they aren’t willing to let another one in?
This chapter explores how these adolescents are catered for by the education system, and what the mainstream can learn from educators who work with these students on a regular basis. The authors weave issues of engagement, mindset and wellbeing, with a Youth Off the Streets front-line account of what it takes to reach them, and teach them.
