Researchers at Victoria University (VU) have successfully piloted a new anti-racism program with enormous potential to address rising levels of racism Australian schools.
The 'Bigger Than This' Program (BTT) across was delivered to 10 high schools in Victoria during 2024, co-designed by students to address the mental and physical health impacts of racism.
According to the Australian Human Rights Commission, 89 per cent young people aged 13-17 had either experienced or witnessed racism. Racism most commonly happened at school (43 per cent) or online (33 per cent).While these figures often focus on interpersonal discrimination or racially motivated verbal abuse, it is also experienced through systemic/structural racism and internalised racism.
BTT is a collaboration between VU, VicHealth and the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission (VEOHRC). VU Professor Chris Sonn and Dr Sam Keast supported the co-creation of the pilot program as well as analysing the process and response in an aligned research project.
From students surveyed who participated in the program, 97 per cent were able to describe something they had learnt from it, 91 per cent were able to describe how racism impacts mental health, and 90 per cent were able to identify an anti-racist action they could take if they heard or saw a racist incident.
"Schools are a powerful vehicle for change. They are where our future community leaders are. We know racism exists in a number of pockets of the school environment and without work, this only festers. We saw a unique opportunity to have this be led by young people for young people at a time in their lives where we could really make an impact," Professor Chris Sonn said
The program
The school-based program, aimed at year nine students, had a strong creative focus including the use of story posters, shared language cards and a creative activity to educate and empower them to take action when they witness or experience racism. In their final activity, they were asked to express and communicate anti-racist actions using creative practices of their choice. This resulted in poster making, writing and delivering raps, performing role plays and app development.
Year nine was determined to be an important level of learning and racial literacy by the youth working group during the program co-design. The working group was made up of a culturally diverse range of young adults who collaborated with a VU, VicHealth and VEOHRC and strategic design consultancy (Today), in the development of the program.
The interest in the pilot was strong. 70 Victorian high schools wanted to be involved with 10 selected ensuring a broad cross-section of schools in terms of geographic location, cultural diversity and size. Whole year levels were chosen to be as inclusive as possible. Depending on the size of the year level, in some instances more than one group of year nines was chosen by their school to participate.
Each facilitated session ran for 100 minutes and included activities that enabled young people to learn about the various types of racism and understand how to enact anti-racism in everyday settings. The five facilitators were those with lived experience of racism. Importantly for the delivery of the program, these facilitators also had expertise in creative arts.
The combination of arts and lived experience resulted in a very engaged group of participants. A post-program survey where students asked about the most fun elements of the program 43 per cent of respondents said it was the role play/rap activity and 24 per cent said it was the group collaboration.
Feedback from those involved:
"The best part of the bigger than this anti racism program was that everyone was involved. I didn't feel excluded from the discussion." - Student
"I think it targeted the kids pretty well in terms of the simplicity of how we taught it and the artistic part of things because they all loved the arty part of things." - Facilitator
"It's been really great to see the confidence that some of these kids end up having, you know... a lot of them end up getting up and do the role plays or creating art, you know, or rapping or, you know. And for the most part, I've found that the other kids have been really…supportive…of each other. They've hyped each other up which was really cool to see." - Facilitator
A comprehensive facilitator handbook was also developed for the program to also support any further extension of this work.
Professor Sonn and Dr Keast said the responses from participants showed they felt safe to share their perspectives regardless of where their racial literacy was.
"Delivered to young people by young people, helps to build trust quickly but also in the delivery of work on a sensitive topic. Students felt supported to discuss the ways racism impacts mental health and anti-racism actions," Dr Keast said.
Support for teachers
Another motivator for the research was supporting school staff. For most schools, there is no other program or formal process for anti-racism, with the work often falling to wellbeing staff (counsellors, psychologists) or individual teachers.
The positive impact was immediate. Some feedback from participating schools included:
"It was such a relief to have someone else take the load off our already very busy teachers. The extra resources for teachers around reporting racism was also very helpful going forward. Students who participated were enthusiastic about the program and seemed to genuinely benefit from what they learnt. I hope the program can continue."
"There's nothing else that speaks directly to racism in our school. There's nothing that really addresses it. We're all about celebrating cultures... but even then speaking about anti-racism is not really implemented. So, I think BTT is great because students not having that discussion elsewhere." - School staff
"I learned that our students have greater understanding of this issue than I originally anticipated which highlighted the need to make this common practice within our cohorts." - School leadership.
Resources for school and teachers was created to support those who participated. A teacher-focused pilot program will be run in 2025.
Next steps
Researchers have shared their findings and recommendations with the Victorian Education Department. This includes recommendations to expand the program across more schools with a longer delivery time, providing greater support for teachers, and incorporating a expert review of the program to further strengthen its impact.
"We know this program would benefit all secondary schools; students, teachers and the broader community. We hope we can continue with this important work of preventing, reporting and calling out racism in our communities," Professor Sonn said.
Read the full report.
