About Us

We have worked for years as teachers, school leaders and academics

As teachers and school leaders, we developed a range of programs to support diverse young people in staying at school under difficult circumstances and have established schooling programs that kept young people connected to schooling. We developed programs that increased retention and achievement for Indigenous young people, young people in poverty, students with disabilities, young mothers and students disengaging from school in both urban and rural settings.

As academics, we have continued to research why young people drop out of school and the policy directions that narrow the choices that schools and young people can make. 

In our research, we extensively use data about attendance, retention, and achievement to help us understand the lived experiences of young people who are disengaging and detaching from school. The data can tell us what is happening. Talking to young people, their communities, and their schools gives us a picture of why it is happening and what can be done about it.

  • Dr Andrew Bills is an Educational Leadership Consultant and adjunct at Flinders University. He lectures, leads research and consults in the areas of policy, politics and practice with a particular interest in socially just reform in school communities struck hard by disadvantage. He is currently the Chief Investigator for three externally funded research projects in the alternative schooling space. His previous professional roles have included positions as an educational leader and designer of three alternative schools, a diagnostic school reviewer, a special education teacher and an Education Department leadership consultant. He works within the research traditions of critical policy sociology, emancipatory action research and lived experience phenomenology. He has published 20 journal articles and three books in these areas

  • Nigel Howard is a Post career researcher. He has worked as a teacher, education activist and school leader for the last thirty years and has been primarily concerned with students in poverty on the edge of schooling. His interest in school retention and achievement of secondary students stems from his involvement as a member of the Senior Secondary (2S) Team, where he was one of the major architects for a suite of subjects that became SACE Community Studies. His work as an innovative teacher and leader has been documented in an ACE publication “Reforming Schools through Innovative Teaching” and “Making Justice Our Project” and in sundry other publications and project reports. He was on the expert’s group for the research project that led to “Listen to Me I’m Leaving. He is currently a casual researcher and tutor at UniSA