Abstract
In Australia, there has been a sustained investment in widening participation activities by the federal government through the Higher Education Participation and Partnership Program (HEPPP) and a sustained effort by universities and their partner schools to create high-quality widening participation programs. However, there is limited longitudinal evidence on if and how these widening participation activities influence the application rates to university by school leavers from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. This article draws on a large mixed-methods study which aimed to investigate differences in university application rates between students from low SES backgrounds in urban versus rural, regional and remote (RRR) schools in Queensland. The research found that widening participation programs had a positive and statistically significant influence on application rates to university in highly engaged schools. We propose the concept of a virtuous circle of sustained widening participation activity to explain the positive results in highly engaged schools.
Highlights
In 2010, the Australian Government established the Higher Education Participation and Partnership Program (HEPPP) which injected substantial amounts of new funding into the university sector to improve participation of students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds in higher education (Australian Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations [DEEWR], 2009)
The study utilised university application data sourced from the Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre (QTAC) as well as data on Year 12 completions sourced from the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA)
The analysis suggests that a comprehensive widening participation program which addresses most of the best-practice approaches identified by Gale et al (2010) and Cupitt et al (2016) and spans primary and secondary years (Fleming & Grace, 2015; Gore et al, 2015), can positively influence the post-school choices of students from low SES backgrounds in favour of going to university
Summary
Tied partnership funding was abolished in 2014 and universities have funded any partnership activities through their general institutional HEPPP allocation since 2015 Despite this significant and long-term investment in widening participation initiatives in Australia, and notable improvements in the participation rate of students from low SES backgrounds and other equity cohorts since 2010 (Koshy, 2017), there is little published evidence for a link between widening participation programs and subsequent university application and enrolment behaviour through longitudinal evaluations. The Queensland Consortium received a large competitive HEPPP grant in 2011 (AUD$15.6m over three years) to implement a state-wide collaboration which targeted Year 6 -12 students in state and non-state schools in low SES communities to improve students’ understanding of post-school options and preparation and aspiration for higher education Despite this coordinated effort by all public universities in Queensland to deliver similar widening participation activities in low SES schools across the state, a divergent pattern in application rates to university was observed in urban versus rural, regional and remote (RRR) schools. The focus is placed on school-leavers instead of adult learners and we explain the adaptations we have made to the model in the methodology
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