Alienation of sub-communities in Western societies poses a risk to liberal democracy, perhaps its greatest risk. When democracy fails to ameliorate systemic disadvantage, then disaffected peoples withdraw from the social contract. It has long been understood that education based in liberal democratic ideals empowers and liberates such communities, inducting them into the materials and tools of social participation, and the dignity of work. Yet maintaining the quality of education amongst the marginalized remains an expensive challenge. One of the key causes is inconsistent teacher quality. This inconsistency is fuelled in part by an intrinsic repellence of talent away from the challenges of living and working amongst disadvantaged groups, often fed by geographic isolation, the lower quality of life, limited access to services, and perceived safety and opportunity risks to the young families of teachers. In the Australian regional, rural and remote (RRR) context, it has been shown that ‘importing’ teacher talent into disadvantaged communities through incentives and inducements has largely failed to redress the teacher-quality problem, as such teachers mostly leave after a required tenure. I argue that the solution lies in halting the exodus of talent from these communities in the first place, such teachers already having a family and sentimental attachment to the genius loci of their homes, and a heightened interest in advancing their home communities or, to employ an Aboriginal term, ‘on country’. I examine an initial teacher education (ITE) pilot project in the NSW Hunter Region, that seeks to train teachers ‘On country, For country’, through an innovative blend of financial and community incentives, the clinical practice model for initial teacher education, and a ‘business to business’ partnership between consortia of schools in a tertiary partnership. The programme seeks to attract and retain local talent into teaching- training, by locating training entirely onsite through a mixed mode of delivery, and a bonded minimum viable numbers model. It is also attracting the attention of national policy makers who are increasingly frustrated with conventional ITE approaches. As the model is currently being developed in remote indigenous teacher training, I propose that the model may be scalable to a range of contexts in Europe and beyond, including European concentrated migrant and refugee communities, ethnic minorities, Mountain Communities and European and Nth American indigenous communities.

This is the first study of a scheduled 10 annual longitudinal studies of the prototype project in the NSW Hunter region, a consortia of 6 schools with a combined enrolment of ~ 4000 students. 1. The first element of the study is a document analysis of national policy concerns around teacher training and teacher attrition. This includes submissions to two current national inquiries into teacher training, co-authored by myself, and the responses by policy makers. 2. The second element reports feedback from two key figures from the University of Melbourne Graduate school of education, who operate one of the only other clinical practice ITE programmes in Australia, at a much larger scale than the Hub prototype. 3. The third element is a study, which is currently being conducted, of the prototype programme in the schools consortia, measuring two key hypothesis: that the embedded Hub approach improves teacher quality by a. retaining talent in the Regional, Rural and Remote areas (RRR) that would have otherwise left to train elsewhere, creating community disruption and loss of social and economic capital b. increase the consistent quality of candidate available to RRR schools A qualitative case-study approach is used (document analysis, semi-structured interviews, observations and surveys), studying the samples of • The first cohort of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) students (8 students): Pilot • The second cohort of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) students (10 students): System These samples are specifically examined for motivations for students entering the programme and the relationships of these motivations with local retention effect. It also measures the quality of candidates. • A second sample is the master teachers who supervise the ITE students to measure student and programme quality. • A third sample includes the whole staff in the schools consortia, surveyed regarding the retention effect and student quality. The data from all stages of the study are analysed using narrative and ethnographic approaches. Finally a cost benefit analysis for the programme has already been developed, by way of initial theorising about regional community benefit.

On raw matriculation metrics, we find that the Hub teaching school model already has attracted a higher quality of ITE candidate, particularly in its second year. We expect to find, across the samples, the preservation of personal connections to existing local networks is a key motivation for ITE students entering the programme, but different types of local network, depending on the age of candidates. The age range of candidates extends from school leavers to mature age candidates in their late 20s. The motivations for the students entering the programme we exect to be significantly affected by this variable, with altruism being a key motivation for young school leaders. we have already identified a desire to preserve a larger local network- a dedicated volunteerism and connection to local churches and sporting / arts organisations, including many leading volunteer programmes within their churches and local communities. For mature age entrants, we anticipate lifestyle options and community-belonging factors to be more significant in decisions to enter the programme, including maintaining the stability of the schooling of their own children, and their current domestic circumstances, including the jobs of spouses. We anticipate a further attraction around the intense sense of belonging to the cohorts and programme, fulfilling a personal need that previous workplaces did not. The approach appears to not only be lifting the consistent quality of ITE students in regional areas, but provides a model for lifting the quality of ITE training more generally, as it is producing confident and engaged ITE students embedded and familiar within a positive community of practice. This will be the first study of its type in the Australian context, and we expect it will establish frames and baselines for further studies of localized ITE training, both in Australia and in Europe and Nth America

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