'It's just teasing': The implications of violence in remote schools

Between 2011 and 2016, the Cooperative Research Centre for Remote Economic Participation’s Remote Education Systems project conducted research in very remote schools with Aboriginal students in the Northern Territory of Australia, South Australia and Western Australia. The findings suggested that the single most important factor contributing to effective teaching in these schools was to take into account the health, well-being and safety of students. The thematic threads behind this included issues of teasing and violence in schools. The research team explored this in some detail at one school in one remote central Australian community, where it was believed that ‘teasing’ was responsible for poor attendance. This case study revealed the extent to which violence is both normalised and understated in the school and community. It revealed how blame for violence was shifted from one site to another, with many staff at the school feeling inadequate to deal with the consequences. Based on the findings, the paper argues for a response, not to teasing, but to violence in schools. The response, according to those who took part in the study, needs to involve the whole community. We conclude that schools like this one, can develop and implement strategies, but where violent behaviours are perpetuated by parents and children, in order to be effective, the strategies must have whole of community buy-in.