A forgotten cohort? Including people from out-of-home care in Australian higher education policy

Abstract

People from out-of-home care backgrounds are largely absent from Australian higher education equity policy. Compared with the UK, Australia has moved slowly to consider legislative and programme incentives for young people who leave state, foster or kinship care and who wish to access higher education. One major reason for the relative inaction of the Australian higher education sector towards this cohort is the rigidity of the national equity framework established in 1990. This article argues that policy reform is required to improve the participation of people from out-of-home care backgrounds in Australian higher education. Effort could be directed into revising the national equity framework, in particular by including out-of-home care as a specific group to be monitored. In addition to revising the national policy architecture, further devolution of equity policy to institutional level may enable greater engagement with the out-of-home care cohort.

Participatory design for community-based research: a study on regional student higher education pathways

“…In Australia, widening participation has focussed on six identified equity groups: people from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds; regional and remote people; those from non-English speaking backgrounds or with a disability; Indigenous people; and women in non-traditional areas, such as Engineering and Informational Technology (Fray, Gore, Harris and North 2020;Harvey, Burnheim and Brett 2016). In recent years, scholars have also identified several other under-represented groups, such as carers, parents, first in family students, and people from out-of-home care backgrounds (Harvey, McNamara and Andrewartha 2015;Stone and O'Shea 2019).…”

Patterns of participation in higher education for care-experienced students in England: why has there not been more progress?

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IkasLagun Posta. Una iniciativa de refuerzo académico en los recursos residenciales de Gipuzkoa tras el COVID 19

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