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Purpose: From 2018, the Schools Up North (SUN) programme worked with three remote Australian schools to enhance their capability and resilience to support the wellbeing and mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and staff. This paper explores the implementation of SUN during the first two years of COVID-19 (2020-2021). Method: Using grounded theory methods, school staff, other service providers and SUN facilitators were interviewed, with transcripts and programme documents coded and interrelationships between codes identified. An implementation model was developed. Results: The SUN approach was place-based, locally informed and relational, fostering school resilience through staff reflection on and response to emerging contextual challenges. Challenges were the: community lockdowns and school closures; (un)availability of other services; community uncertainty and anxiety; school staff capability and wellbeing; and risk of educational slippage. SUN strategies were: enhancing teachers' capabilities and resources, facilitating public health discussions, and advocating at regional level. Outcomes were: enhanced capability of school staff; greater school-community engagement; student belonging and engagement; a voice for advocacy; and continuity of SUN's momentum. Conclusions: The resilience approach (rather than specific strategies) was critical for building schools' capabilities for promoting students and staff wellbeing and provides an exemplar for remote schools globally.

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 Queensland to understand the conditions required for these students to be resilient while studying away from home. This paper reports on levels of student satisfaction with Queensland Department of Education's Transition Support Service (TSS) that provide assistance to remote-dwelling Indigenous students in the transition to boarding schools. A survey instrument administered to students included 22 close-ended questions to elicit levels of student satisfaction with TSS. Data were collected electronically using SurveyMonkey[TM] and analysed in SPSS v24. Descriptive statistics were calculated for variables assessing service support, student perceptions and experiences. A total of 294 primary, secondary and re-engaging students across 21 sites responded. Nearly all primary students (97%) anticipated that TSS would assist their move to boarding school. All secondary students identified that TSS had assisted their transition to boarding school. All re-engaging students agreed that TSS support had increased their capacity to cope when things go wrong. Lower scores related to students' ability to access TSS when needed. Very high levels of satisfaction with TSS were countered by constraints of distance between TSS and students, and resources available to support the work of TSS. Findings point to the need for equitable provision of transition services in Queensland that emphasise the importance of relationship between service provider and student, and can inform the design of similar transition services across Australia.

Indigenous research leadership can enhance research benefits to Indigenous communities. Our research investigates how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (henceforth Indigenous) leadership is expressed in the context of academic research, and how Indigenous leadership is supported or constrained in such context. This exploratory study includes semi-structured interviews with 20 Indigenous Australian researchers and document analysis. The thematic content analysis suggests that 'Indigenous leadership in research' refers to features, qualities or processes that enable certain outcomes, rather than formal ranking. Our research proposes a model connecting Indigenous leadership features in research with the achievement of (social) research impacts. The performance measures valued in academic research reflect a limited part of leadership as expressed by interviewees, hindering the achievement of higher hierarchical positions by those who holistically pursue such a leadership model. We suggest changes in the incentive structure and performance measures to better support Indigenous leadership in research.

Internationally, schools have recognised the need for supporting and improving the resilience of students, particularly those facing a multiplicity of challenges. However, social and emotional learning programmes, including those aimed at enhancing resilience, are often not evaluated thoroughly nor detail process and economic evaluations. This paper evaluates a multi-component integrated intervention designed to strengthen the resilience of remote-living Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students attending boarding schools. This evaluation is largely process-based, focussing on the acceptability, feasibility, preliminary outcomes and affordability of implementation of the intervention. Fourteen boarding or teaching staff members, eight female and six who identified as Aboriginal, were interviewed. The interviews were conducted with staff members at eight Queensland boarding sites where the intervention was delivered. Qualitative inductive thematic analysis was used to evaluate feasibility and acceptability and outcomes described by staff. A descriptive analysis of the costs (AU$ 2018) was performed in Microsoft Excel 2013. This evaluation identified multiple major themes around feasibility and acceptability, including sharing experience across sites, staff knowledge, attitudes and behaviours, and perceived student achievement, leadership and relationships. Implementation of the resilience intervention was considered feasible and affordable, and embraced by boarding providers. School-based participatory action research interventions aimed at improving culturally appropriate support structures for Indigenous boarding students are achievable with the appropriate resourcing and time to implement and embed change.

Developing and nurturing resilience is critical to the social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) of Indigenous Australian adolescents and their continuing life trajectories. The attendance of many Indigenous adolescents from remote communities at boarding schools creates a need to prioritise and proactively create opportunities that build and nurture student resilience. This requires sustainable and multi-dimensional school-wide approaches. Despite this need, there are no documented SEWB or resilience building approaches for Australian Indigenous students who attend boarding schools. We describe the use of participatory action research to develop and implement a two-year STEP-UP intervention with boarding schools, designed to create supportive environments for improving psychosocial resilience and wellbeing of remote-living Indigenous students. The intervention consisted of three components implemented annually across eight schools: a site-specific STEP-UP action plan; staff capacity development; and an annual Schools and Communities Conference. Thematic analysis of a systematic literature review, documented action planning, conference group processes, resilience theory and survey findings from the associated broader resilience study resulted in the identification of six resilience building domains: valuing culture and identity; developing cultural leadership; nurturing strong relationships; building social and emotional skills; creating safe, supportive environments; and building staff capacity. These domains became the resulting framework for STEP-UP planning and enabled focused examination of practices and future planning. Learnings from the intervention process suggest principles to consider when designing interventions: utilising a strengths-based approach; design responsiveness; collaborative partnerships; institutional capacity; and sustainability. A resilience toolkit website was developed to enable knowledge translation and sustainability beyond the study.

In meeting the social and emotional learning (SEL) needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, the capacities of school staff are critical. There is very limited evidence for relevant capacity development initiatives. This evaluation reports a multicomponent SEL training intervention delivered to staff of an Australian education service that operates independently of any particular school to assist with the transitions of students from remote communities to boarding schools. A participatory action research (PAR) approach was implemented over 13-months with 21 staff participants. Results from a pre-, mid- and six months post-training survey and staff interviews were analysed and fed back through reflective group discussions. The training was associated with improved staff attitudes to mental health and skills to support student wellbeing. Sixteen participants received a tertiary qualification. Despite 'working in challenging environments', staff were 'dedicated to help' students, and 'acknowledged the need for change' to better support student wellbeing. However, given the service's brokering role between families and schools, fewer staff members reported feeling empowered to influence issues in their workplace. The evaluation demonstrated the value of SEL training for education staff and potential utility for school teachers and boarding staff who have direct duty of care for Indigenous students. The multicomponent training described in this study would need to be condensed for school settings.

School completion has been hailed by many as the 'holy grail' of Indigenous education, and 42% remote-living Indigenous students now attain year 12 completion each year. But for a range of complex reasons, only 60% of these graduates translate this achievement into further engagement in study, training or employment. This systematic literature review examined the evidence for strategies that support the post-schooling transitions of these students. Adhering to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework, it examinedthe scope and quality of the existing evidence and applied qualitative meta-synthesis to elucidate the conditions that enable or hinder, and strategies that support post-schooling transitions. Findings suggested that lower rates of post-schooling study or employment uptake are influenced by: historical misalignment of education approaches with community values and aspirations; limited opportunities in remote communities; and other socio-economic factors. Strategies were found to be most effective when cross-sectoral education/employment and community partnerships were formed, and remote communities were integral in the planning and implementation process. Strategies to improve transitions included: embedding Indigenous and Western knowledge systems in education, task-based learning, explicitly addressing students' language needs, providing immersion experiences such as in universities, and mentoring programs to widen students' aspirations. However, the evidence-base remains weak and further research is needed to understand the impact of strategies on students' aspirations and their immediate and long-term post-schooling transitions.