In an increasingly globalised and technological world, job market success in developed countries such as Australia depends on the attainment of post-secondary qualifications. However, young Australians do not all have an equal opportunity to attain this necessary level of education. As it currently stands, approximately two-and-a-half years of schooling separates the achievement scores of students in the highest and lowest socioeconomic quartiles, and student achievement differs significantly according to location (e.g. rural or metropolitan) and cultural background. All Australian governments have recognised the need to increase quality and equity in Australian schooling and one of the key ways in which they are currently seeking to achieve this is through improving parent-school partnerships and parent engagement in child learning.The critical importance of engaging parents in their child's learning and building parent-school partnerships has been established in the international literature but research in the Australian context is limited. It is well documented that disadvantaged parents, which in Australia would include Indigenous parents and those from lower socio-economic statuses, tend to have lower levels of engagement in their child's school and learning, and face additional barriers to engagement when compared to more advantaged parents. Our results are consistent with these previous findings.Although Principals from disadvantaged schools were just as likely as those from more advantaged schools to report using a range of engagement strategies, they were significantly less likely to find many methods effective in involving parents in their school. Furthermore, a less positive culture of parent volunteerism was reported by P&C Presidents from disadvantaged schools. This suggests that those schools in which the children stand to gain the most from increasing levels of parent engagement, are the same schools finding their efforts to engage parents the least effective. These findings highlight the need to identify what does work in disadvantaged schools and to ensure that interventions are tailored to the specific needs of these schools, as applying uniform strategies across all schools may only compound the advantage of those already doing well. Principals in this study emphasised different barriers to parent involvement according to the school's level of advantage. Time-pressure factors such as work and family responsibilities were more likely to be identified in more advantaged schools, whereas parent factors such as a lack of interest and a lack of confidence, along with transportations problems, were more likely to be identified in disadvantaged schools. This information can be used to guide the future development of interventions.

Changes in sexual identity labels in a contemporary cohort of emerging adult women: patterns, prevalence and a typology Sexual attraction, behaviour and identity are subject to change across the life course for some individuals, and certain developmental periods such as emerging adulthood appear particularly conducive to this. However, the evidence documenting these phenomena comes overwhelmingly from data collected 10-20 years ago. In the brief interlude since, the socio-political context has changed markedly and increasing numbers of women are reporting non-heterosexuality. Drawing on contemporary data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (n = 16,870), we provide up to date evidence on changes in sexual identity labels among emerging adult women. We find that 19% of women changed their sexual identity label from one survey wave to the next, and 30.6% changed their identity label at least once across the four waves. Mostly heterosexual and bisexual labels were both more common and more stable in our sample than in previous studies. We propose a new typology of sexual identity sequences and fit this to our data, providing a blueprint for researchers looking to define sexual minority status longitudinally. Findings suggest that the ways women perceive and label their sexual orientation should be treated as dynamic phenomena situated within the nested temporalities of biographical and historical time.

In 2017, the Australian Government commissioned a national vote on same-sex marriage legislation, which elicited substantial debates dominated by religious voices. We examine the associations between religious identification, importance of religion to one's life and frequency of attendance at religious services and support for same-sex couples in such a unique context. We contribute to knowledge by (i) systematically examining these relationships in a country other than the US (Australia) using high-quality, nationallyrepresentative panel data spanning 2005-2015 (Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey; n=44,794 observations/18,384 individuals), (ii) assessing the degree of intragroup heterogeneity in views towards equal rights, and (iii) considering how religiosity modifies the effects of other socio-structural factors. We find high degrees of between-and within-group heterogeneity in support of equal rights for same-sex couples, and large religiosity gradients. Furthermore, religiosity suppresses the liberalising effects on attitudes of historical time, education, socioeconomic background, and city residence. BACKGROUND Recent debates about recognising same-sex marriage provide a site for the examination of the role of religion in the public sphere. Australia provides a unique opportunity, having recently conducted a national vote to gauge public opinion on same-sex marriage. While the presence of religious voices in public policy debates in Australia have been consistent, the 2017 Australian national ballot on marriage equality emerged as an arena where religious communities actively attempted to dictate what was to happen in the wider society. Religious groups, who in 2016 conducted fewer than 25% of weddings, actively campaigned to limit marriage to heterosexual couples for the whole of society-even though they were (and are) able to privately refuse to marry such couples. This paper offers a discussion of the role of religion in recent debates about same-sex marriage in Australia. Using a large, nationally representative panel study, it provides a detailed analysis of whether and how the views promoted by religious groups resonate with the views reported by individuals who identify with those religions. Specifically, we assess the importance of individual-level variables such as religious identification, religious participation and importance of religion as predictors of support of equal rights for same-sex couples. We make three key contributions to the literature. First, we draw detailed attitude comparisons amongst highly disaggregated religious groups in a new and interesting country context, Australia. In doing so, we question the universality of theories and findings from the US, where the bulk of the research has taken place, and tease out the importance of institutional context (Adamczyk 2017). Second, we discuss and test the degree of intra-group heterogeneity in attitudes to same-sex couples, which we take as a proxy for denominational subcultures (Gay et al. 1996). Third, using ...

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