RISE is Aurora’s five-year initiative (2022-2027) to redefine Indigenous success in education. Through RISE, Aurora has engaged with over 800 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to understand the best ways to encourage each student’s own version of success through academic, cultural and wellbeing support. This extensive dataset is underpinned by Indigenous Data Sovereignty principles and co-governed by an independent Indigenous Data Governance Committee. RISE seeks to establish a clearer link between specific types of support and Indigenous student outcomes.

To date, RISE has undertaken a range of activities to develop the RISE Outcomes Framework alongside students, their family and Aurora alumni. The framework articulates an Indigenous defined model of educational success and provides a foundation for evaluating different models of Aurora’s High School Program. This will generate an evidence-based and financially sustainable model that will address significant gaps in knowledge of ‘what works’ in Indigenous education.

In this workshop, participants will engage with the design and structure of the RISE Project and RISE Outcomes Framework. Participants will be invited to contribute to the project’s ongoing development and discuss how the learnings from RISE might be applied in their context.

• What does educational success look like in your community?

• What tensions exist between education systems and Indigenous measures of success in your community?

• How can Indigenous definitions of educational success challenge and disrupt conventional success measures in education?

• What conditions are required for RISE to the successfully expand beyond its current context?