Ending School Exclusion: National Research Project Launch

PHOTO: NIYEC CEO, Hayley McQuire, Presenting at the Ending School Exclusion: National Research Project launch.

On 21st March 2024 – internationally recognised as the ‘International Day of Elimination of Racial Discrimination’ – NIYEC launched the School Exclusion Project Research Report and the accompanying School Exclusion Youth Guide.

The launch marked a powerful and timely contribution to national conversations about racism, education, and justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people. An Australian first, the report offers a detailed historical account of how laws and government policies across each state and territory have excluded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from education systems — from the nineteenth century to the present day.

Drawing on archival records, historiography, legislation, and policy analysis, the research team has mapped out the structural and systemic ways schooling has been used as a tool of exclusion.

Together, the timelines presented in the report form the first comprehensive national picture of this long-standing injustice.The findings underscore the urgent need to reform education systems that continue to uphold exclusionary practices. It calls for a collective effort to address racialised school exclusion and adds to the existing calls for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led learning system.

To launch the Youth Guide, NIYEC hosted a lunchtime yarn with Samara Hand, Renee Phillips, Anthony Wotton, and Tarneen Onus Williams. The discussion centred on how young people can use the guide to understand and challenge exclusion in their own schools and communities, offering reflections on resistance, advocacy, and cultural resilience. Later that day, the official launch of the research report was held at the University of Melbourne.

The panel, featuring Professor Mark Rose, Alinta Williams, Dr Crystal McKinnon, and Coree Thorpe, reflected on the report’s findings, the contemporary impacts of exclusion, and the historical and ongoing fight for the right to education. The School Exclusion Project was developed by a multidisciplinary team of researchers — Samara Hand, Dr Beth Marsden, Dr Archie Thomas, and Dr Mati Keynes — whose work brings together deep historical knowledge and a commitment to educational justice.

Both the Research Report and Youth Guide are now freely available for download.