HISTORY OF RESTORATIVE PRACTICE IN AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS

Australian First Peoples have been on this continent for around 70,000 years, leading in all aspects of life, including education.

Restorative Justice is rooted in indigenous traditions and thinking – on all the continents – in which our interconnections and obligations to one another are understood holistically.

The contemporary western expression of restorative justice originated in the 1970s, within judicial contexts, in North America.

The first schools in the world to bring Restorative Practice to the classroom were in Australia.

image credit: Restorative Practices International -Queensland

In the 1990s, Australia made history.


Australian schools were the first in the world to utilise Restorative Practice. The first academic research of Restorative Practice in schools occurred in Queensland and was published in 1996. Since these beginnings, Restorative Practice in education has flourished both in Australia and abroad.

In 2020 and 2021, we will be interviewing key people involved in the origins of Restorative Practice in Australia. Their stories will be told - with videos - on this page.

Do visit in the coming months to hear their stories.