Feature
RESN: Bridging the achievement gap Kelly Southworth Editor
In metropolitan Melbourne, our Year 12s have endless resources to help them through their VCE or IB studies. Students have access to revision lectures run by universities, tutors in every suburb covering all subjects, well-resourced libraries that are open late, even later during exam periods, and most students live pretty close to their school. Students from rural Australia tell a different story however. Even though all students in the VCE are competing against each other, the playing field isn’t entirely level for those outside of the major cities. This is why Old Carey Grammarian Jacob Wilkinson (2016) and his friends developed the Regional Education Support Network (RESN). Their organisation offers free online tutoring for students of the VCE in regional Victoria, with no more than a 24-hour turnaround for proofreading, answering questions and providing invaluable feedback. Jacob attended Carey from Year 7, and completed the IB in Years 11 and 12. He was very studious but also focussed a lot of energy on the co-curricular offerings. Jacob was involved in musicals, debating and played the trombone, which he thinks helped him to balance study and keep sane. ‘I think there was a really significant lesson in being involved in so many cocurricular activities, it definitely helped 14 | Torch
with time management and learning about my limits through challenging myself. It allowed me to engage with all different types of people, and I really valued that.’ Now at Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, Jacob still does his best to balance his life with his double degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, and Asian Studies. ‘It’s been so important to exercise and get as much sleep as I can. I go to the gym as well as alternate swimming and running every morning with a group of friends, because when you’ve started your morning like that, there’s very little that can throw you the rest of the day.’ The idea for RESN came after Jacob started at ANU. A lot of the people he met came from all around Australia, including regional and rural towns. A big difference he noticed when meeting people from outside the big cities was the lack of resources available to them during Year 12. ‘Some of my mates just didn’t have access to that kind of thing, and they were on their own for a lot of it. They had their teachers, but after hours they had to work everything out for themselves.’ Jacob and his friends called on their network of recent Year 12 graduates in Melbourne to see if they would be
interested in getting involved. The tutors committed to one hour of tutoring online a week, and RESN launched a pilot program with just under 100 students from Seymour College and Wodonga Senior Secondary College. They knew they were on the right track from the enthusiastic support and positive feedback from these schools. One of the principals in particular expressed to RESN that he felt this program could really change the outcomes for his students, offer them something to focus on outside of school
