Voices Shaping Education

Young refugees worldwide are confronted with multiple challenges in accessing and completing education. The Africa region is currently the focus of Australia's humanitarian program and is likely to remain so for some time. Typically, young people are entering schools and Intensive English Centres under considerable stress. Teachers are overwhelmed by the challenges. This article focuses on the transition experiences of 65 young African refugees in public schools in Western Sydney. These experiences are important for linking teaching and research to policy discussions. This study also emphasizes how international development issues connect tacitly to domestic classrooms and communities. In particular, this study explores policy solutions that provide possibilities for long-term participation of refugee young people in new societies.

The primary component of the project was a series of five arts-based workshops with students in each of the schools. In collaboration with two multilingual arts facilitators, we conducted the workshops with six groups of young people approximating to Years 7-8 and Years 9-11 age levels (drawn from IEC and high school classes). The participants were recruited with the assistance of school staff and consisted of equal numbers of girls and boys. The research team asked for a range of students, very new arrivals and those who had been in Australia for more than one year. The young people were overwhelmingly of Southern Sudanese (60) background, which represented Australia's refugee intake priority at the time. Other participants originated from Sierra Leone (three), Somalia (one), and Senegal (one).