Reframing Refugee Education Policies and Practices in Australia: A Freirean Perspective

Australian policies on asylum seekers and refugees have long been shaped by discourses of border control, detention, and ‘unauthorised arrivals’, which cast refugees as conditional entrants rather than rights-bearing participants. Within settlement policy, the emphasis has been on acclimatisation – prioritising English acquisition, practical life skills, and employability – while obscuring the structural barriers of racism, restrictive visa regimes, and the devaluation of prior education and knowledge. Education policies mirror this assimilationist framing across schooling, vocational training, and higher education, where refugee-background students are positioned primarily in terms of service needs and deficits rather than rights and capabilities. This chapter critically examines the intersection of refugee settlement and education policy in Australia through a Freirean lens. It first analyses the National Settlement Framework as a service-delivery model of integration, then explores how its logics are reproduced across school, TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training), and higher education sectors. It links these education practices to the broader evolution of refugee and settlement policy, demonstrating how migration control has shaped access and opportunity. Finally, it applies Paulo Freire’s to critique the ‘banking model’ that dominates refugee education and to advance problem-posing pedagogy as a liberatory alternative. In doing so, the article argues for re-framing refugee settlement and education to centre refugee voices, agency, and knowledge, challenging systemic oppression and advancing education as a practice of freedom.