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This paper examines aspects of the school-to-work transition process for high-achieving Indigenous Fijian young women using selective data from a wider study of school-to-work transitions conducted in 2005. It appears that traditional and colonial understandings of the role of Fijian women still shape even high-achieving girls’ career and life options; these are expressed through their subject choices at school and their narrow career aspirations. While the social reproduction mechanisms of schools are evident, families and communities are also implicated. High-achieving girls still tend to emulate the career choices of older women in their families and communities, even in the current context of a marked lessening of labour market opportunities for the time-honoured ‘white-collar’ occupations of teaching, nursing and public service work. Some provisional interpretations, looking towards productive interventions at school, community and church level, of this phenomenon are offered.

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This paper is concerned with pointing out the tension between two current policy trends in Australian education. On the one hand there is the drive for economic rationalism. On the other hand, there are calls to place the responsibility for Aboriginal education completely in the hands of Aboriginal people. It is proposed that currently the force of the former severely constrains the possibility of the latter. Show less