Yea High School is located in rural Victoria. A small school with only one Year 12 class, Yea High has limited teachers and resources. These are the students from these kinds of schools that benefit most from RESN's work.

One success story is of a Yea High School student who, as a Year 10 student, was disengaged from her classwork and achieving middling marks, particularly in English. In Year 12, this student found RESN, where supportive and capable tutors could provide rapid, constructive feedback and encouraged her to keep having a go. After submitting 46 essays at an average of more than one per week, she achieved the maximum final score of 50 in English (one of 94, in a cohort of 35,000)!

Since graduating, she has since joined the RESN team as a volunteer and English tutor, giving younger students the opportunity to excel as she did. Bruce Skewes, Principal of Yea High School, explained that “the opportunity to access something like this for country schools is huge... if [RESN] can be introduced to more and more country schools, I think they’ll benefit too.”

Sharon Hill, VCE Coordinator at Seymour College, recently told us that “one of the biggest issues for country kids is aspiration...many of our students wouldn’t have seen what a university looks like”. Many of these students do not have family members who have received higher education, and find themselves without role models to whom they can turn. Consequently, student motivation and engagement is lower, with 15% fewer students completing their [high school education] in some regional areas (Lamb, Glover & Walstab, 2014).

RESN has been able to help many students identify and reach for their goals. Over several years, RESN representatives have visited schools and shared their experience. As Sharon Hill confirmed, “it’s good for them to have that exposure...it opens students’ perspectives in terms of what options are available to them”. Not only do we provide academic support to students, but we provide a level of engagement which is otherwise lacking, and we continue to highlight the possibilities available to regional and rural students, helping to "improve aspirations" (Sharon Hill).