“Where there is complexity, there is opportunity,” says Chris Sarra, founder of Australia’s Stronger Smarter Institute.

It’s a statement that he has been trying to get school leaders and teachers to buy into for more than 10 years.

He set up the institute in 2005 to tackle the under-performance of indigenous and Torres Strait Island students in Australian schools. He believes that the under-performance was caused by low expectations and poor understanding of how to motivate these children.

These children have the same problems you see with other marginalised or disadvantaged groups in countries around the world, he says. “As educators we will sometimes write kids off because of where they come from and the complexity of their home life,” he explains.

Sarra was formally a headteacher at an Australian state school before setting up the institute. Of Aboriginal heritage himself, he set about changing the cultural conditions for indigenous students in his school and continued that work with the institute.

Schools need to compensate

The Stronger Smarter Institute runs courses for teachers to help change their expectations of indigenous students. The programme has helped more than 2,500 school and community leaders, in turn impacting 38,000 indigenous students.

The key, he believes, to the success, is a “no-excuses” strategy familiar to many in the UK education system - a belief that a less-than-ideal home life should not be a reason to have low expectations of a child.

The Stronger Smarter Institute forces teachers to recognise their habitual patterns and the impact that can have on how they form relationships with students depending on their social circumstances.

It persuades teachers that high expectations for all - regardless of background - is the key to success for all, rather than modified expectations as a compensation for a less-than-ideal home life.

The right to a good education

“It’s about connecting with the core humanity of the kids and parents, and understanding it at that much deeper level - they have a right to a good quality education and they have a right to turn up to a school where they can have a sense of hope nurtured for them,” he explains.

Sarra was inspired to do this by his own experiences in the education system. Since then his mission has been to ensure that disadvantaged children do not have the same experience he did of low expectation leading to low achievement.

He says that teachers across the world owe it to these children not to let an inbuilt and inaccurate view of what they can achieve get in the way of their education.

He recognises that shifting mindsets in this way is going to be a long process. But he is committed to challenging perceptions, teacher by teacher, until things change.

Brittany Vonow is a freelance writer based in London. She tweets at @bvonow

Chris Sarra is the founder of The Stronger Smarter Institute.

This is an edited version of a feature in the 30 September issue of TES. Subscribers can read the full story here. To subscribe, click here. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here. The magazine is also available in all good newsagents.

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