The Ross Trust has announced a $300,000 grant for Learning Creates Australia (LCAust) for a landmark project examining how schools can better support student engagement and wellbeing.

The 18-month initiative, Wellbeing for Learning – Strengthening School Engagement Through Culture, Practice and Systems, aims to change how Australian schools understand and respond to the needs of young people.

LCAust is an independent not-for-profit committed to dismantling barriers, advancing innovation, and fostering learning environments that transform Australia's learning systems — creating a future where young people, regardless of where they start, can succeed.

"Our learning system is stuck," says LCAust CEO Bronwyn Lee. "It's unfair and underperforming in all the ways that matter — performance, productivity, equity, engagement, wellbeing, identity and inclusion.

"While other developed nations are forging ahead with 21st century learning strategies, Australia is being left behind with an outdated, underperforming education system.

"Wellbeing and learning are deeply linked. You can't learn effectively if you're not well, and holistic learning environments can actively support wellbeing by fostering identity, connection, and achievement."

Bronwyn says research identifies Years 7–9 as the steepest period of decline in school engagement, with the transition into secondary school a particular inflection point.

"For many young people, school becomes a source of stress rather than fulfilment and enjoyment," she says.

"Momentum is building for schools to take a more holistic approach, but there is no consolidated evidence base on what practices, structures, and system conditions best support wellbeing-centred learning. This is the gap that the Ross Trust grant will help LCAust address," she said.

The grant will enable LCAust to convene a network of Victorian schools to test, document, and share what it takes to embed wellbeing for learning in practice.

“We are targeting a mix of government, Catholic and independent schools across metropolitan, regional and rural Victoria, with deliberate overrepresentation of schools serving disadvantaged communities,” she says. “Several schools and organisations are already collaborating partners. It's an open invitation to others to also join.”

The project will draw on the expertise of researchers and policy leaders including Professor Sharon Goldfeld AM, Director of the Centre for Community Child Health at the Royal Children's Hospital and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and leading education policy expert Megan O'Connell, whose 2019 report Those Who Disappear: The Australian education problem nobody wants to talk about highlighted the thousands of young Australians missing entirely from education.

Sharon says the grant comes at a crucial time.

“I think this is the line in the sand when we have the chance to really understand why kids are inequitably disengaging from our education systems,” she says. “At the heart of it will be learning and wellbeing, but also family and community.

“This clever funding from the Ross Trust will harness the convening, research and policy power necessary to both understand the engagement exodus from mainstream schools, and at the same time find out what helps kids both stay and come back.”

The project funding will support dedicated project and research staff, network convening, as well as voices of people with lived experience.

“Four young people with lived experience of school disengagement will be employed in paid positions in the project team,” Bronwyn says. “These young people will have agency in determining how they share their stories and engage their peers in contributing to the project. Additionally, young people who contribute to the project in other capacities will receive vouchers or gift cards in recognition of their time and input.”

Bronwyn said after 18 months, LCAust will have:

• a clear picture of the scale and scope of school disengagement across the sector
• a validated, practice-ready framework of the conditions that sustain engagement
• case studies showing how these conditions apply across different school contexts
• a creative piece led by young people sharing their experiences, and
• a cross-sector Learning Network equipped to operate independently beyond the project

The Ross Trust is committed to addressing the barriers that prevent young people from fully participating in education.

"By strengthening the connection between wellbeing and learning, this project has the potential to shift not just what happens inside classrooms, but how Australia's education system thinks about what it means for young people to thrive," said The Ross Trust Executive Officer Meghan Weekes.

Visit https://www.learningcreates.org.au for more information.