For most 15-year-olds, school is out. But not for these 24 trailblazers.
Two dozen Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids have spent the past week at the Australian Science and Maths School in Adelaide, building their academic and cultural prowess.
But after a decade of success this summer school may be the last, due to flagging support from state governments.
Among the 18,000 indigenous students who face a critical choice - whether to study for university, or drop out, this accelerated science course encouraging them to stay, says the program's lecturer, Ian Maynard.
"Indigenous kids from across Australia who are in year ten and who are already doing well. Maybe already thinking about university,” he said.
“We get them down here in Adelaide for somewhere between 7 and 10 days and try to give them an experience of university level science, or sometimes industry level science."
It's serious stuff, from DNA splicing, to Indigenous medicine.
“They've extracted eucalyptus oil, using a traditional method, and they've tested it for its antibiotic capability, testing it against some commercial antibiotic material, and it appears to be just as effective as the commercial antibiotics - I'm not aware of this having been done before,” he said.
Then the nerve-wracking presentation of findings to a public audience, that for some like student Haylea page from Kirwan High School in Townsville, is proving a great boost to career ambitions.
“Well I've changed my path greatly, I wanted to do law before but now I want to do crime scene investigation,' she said
And it's making community members, like Kaurna Elder Alice Rigney, very proud.
"And I just want to say congratulations, because you've done such a wonderful job - I was gobsmacked sitting there, you know, thinking this is the future of the country," she said.
Cultural education is included, as many city-based kids know little of their indigenous heritage, according to the program's patron, Professor Peter Buckskin.
“We want to show these Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students that it's great to be a good academic, great scholarship, but you don't have to do that at the expense of their culture,” he said.
“So a very strong part of ASSETS is about them developing their own cultural understandings, their identity, to understand their language group, their place in their family.”
He says the course challenging the notion of Indigenous failure.
“There's more of our young people succeeding than failing. Unfortunately there is a really solid hard core that are not achieving and not having the success that these 24 outstanding young people that are with us this week are achieving, and so part of their role is when they go back they're going to try to tell other kids in their schools about the real importance of staying on at school.”
Student Dwayne Warrior, from Glossop High School in Riverland, South Australia, agrees.
"I'm trying to lift the Aboriginal standards up higher so there's more expectations from Aboriginal students, so we're not discriminated as like low test scores and stuff like that. We want to be known as what we have done and what we can do in the future,” he said.
But despite the program's success, it's struggling to secure government and corporate support.
“At this moment as I speak we don't have enough money in the bank to run the program next year, it costs about $150,000 in cash, and there's a lot of in-kind input,” and Maynard said.
Paul Caica, South Australia Aboriginal Affairs Minister is maintaining his government's pledge and is urging others to follow suit.
"We will continue to be great supporters but my message to those interstate, corporations interstate, those that have dealings with Aboriginal communities is to dig into their pockets because this is a program that is not only a good program - it's a good program because it's getting results," he said.
Lenore Irvine, student at St Mary's College in Queensland optimizes these results.
"After school I'm hoping to go to university and get a degree in forensic science or that type of field and I'm hoping to join the federal police force," she said.
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