Universities to form closer ties with schools

The Australian, 30 April 2008

A professor from The University of Melbourne’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education, Professor Richard James, believes that universities should work more closely with the disadvantaged schools in their areas.

According to Professor James, the number of disadvantaged students attending university is as low as it was 15 years ago. He believes that a close working relationship between underprivileged university students and high schools would encourage more school leavers to undertake further study, no matter what their socioeconomic background.

‘Each university should embrace a number of under-represented schools in their catchments and get their best academics working with those schools to raise kids' aspirations and strengthen the educational environment,’ Professor James said.

In addition, Professor James holds the current ENTER score system accountable for the lack of ‘social class’ representation. He says that ‘the gridlock that ENTER scores create [has] to be broken by establishing pathways to university that bypassed the narrow selectivity of ENTERs’.

The Deputy Vice-Chancellor of The University of South Australia, Professor Peter Lee, strongly agrees with Professor James’ proposal. He further believes that these kinds of ‘outreach programmes’ should be a consideration in the upcoming funding agreements between universities and the Federal Government.

Later this year, The University of Tasmania is intending to pilot an outreach programme where the university and nearby schools will work together to ‘deliver language units’ and possibly implement ‘new course material for sustainability science’.

 

 

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