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There are currently six recognised equity groups in the Australian higher education system: people from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, people from Non-English Speaking Backgrounds, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People, people from regional and remote areas, people with disability and women in non-traditional areas of study. Critics of the Australian higher education equity framework have underscored the existence of other potential sources of educational disadvantage that currently lack official recognition. Given the increasing prevalence of mental health issues among young people, some scholars and equity stakeholders have recommended refining or complementing the existing disability equity group by explicitly incorporating measures of poor mental health. A recent change to the definitions of higher education data elements might be seen as a step towards recognising poor mental health as a condition that can lead to educational disadvantage.

The analyses presented in this report fill two significant knowledge gaps. First, the study investigates the overlap between pre-existing poor mental health and membership in the officially identified equity groups (all of which are also defined on the basis of information preceding the commencement of university studies). Second, the study examines the impact of pre-existing poor mental health on early student outcomes, namely first-year attrition. Altogether, our results unequivocally stress the critical importance of pre-existing poor mental health as a predictor of student attrition during the first year of university. Despite some overlap between students with poor mental health and students who belong to the officially identified equity groups - chiefly students with disability - our results indicate that the disadvantage stemming from pre-existing poor mental health is distinct from that stemming from being a member of any of the designated equity groups.

Based on these findings, three recommendations are formulated: (1) stakeholders at all levels should consider poor mental health as an important factor contributing to first-year student attrition and design more mental health-focused interventions; (2) the Australian Government should consider allocating more funding to support students with disabilities; and (3) the Australian Government should consider funding (a) the collection or linkage of data that enable a more robust examination of the extent and repercussions of poor mental health amongst university students, and (b) research that expands the analytic scope of this report to other phases of the student life cycle.

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This document is based on outcomes of the round table discussion organised jointly by the European Training Foundation (ETF) and the Slovenian Phare vocational education and training (VET) Reform Programme Management Unit, held in Bohinj, Slovenia from October 4-6, 1998. There is increasing evidence, particularly in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, of growing unemployment among lower qualified young people. The development of national concepts of using VET as a means to combat social exclusion are important as an initial step towards a solution to this problem. This report is designed to provide a general overview of the challenges and raise awareness of the need to develop target group-specific policies and programs at both local and national levels to facilitate social exclusion. The three-day seminar focused on the experiences of Slovenia and Hungary, examining the issue of school drop-out and providing some comparison with experiences in other European Union (EU) countries. The report begins by providing some background information relating to school leavers without vocational qualifications in EU and partner countries. The following section summarises the situation in Slovenia and Hungary, developments in partner countries, experiences from EU countries, common issues emerging from the discussion, and initial steps towards the development of national concepts for VET against social exclusion. The next two sections provide more detail on the situation in Slovenia and Hungary and the experiences of the EU countries; Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom. Annex 1 provides detailed information about the situation of lowly qualified young people and measures being adopted to address the problem in several partner countries (Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Poland and Romania) and annex 2 contains a list of participants.

The conclusions from the meeting in Slovenia are indexed at TD/INT 61.137. Show less

This paper is part of the Measuring the Effectiveness of Student Aid (MESA) project, a four year research effort being conducted by the Canadian Education Project and the School for Policy Studies at Queen's University on behalf of the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation.

The paper uses the extremely rich [Youth in Transition Survey] YITS-B database to provide a unique national-level analysis of persistence in post-secondary education (PSE) in Canada from individuals' entry into their first PSE program. [The authors] first calculate hazard rates (and cumulative transition rates) with respect to those who (i) graduate, (ii) switch programs, and (iii) leave PSE (perhaps to return later). Switchers are further divided into those who change programs within a given institution, those who change to a different institution at the same level (i.e. college or university), and those who change level. [The authors] also look at the reasons for switching and leaving, subsequent re-entry rates among leavers, and graduation and persistence rates once switchers and re-entrants are taken into account. These patterns are then probed in more detail using hazard (regression) models where switching, leaving, and re-entering are related to individual characteristics, family background, high school outcomes, and early PSE experiences.

[The authors] find that by five years after entering PSE, graduation rates from the first program are 56.5 per cent for college students and 52.1 per cent for university students, but these rates rise to 73.1 and 69.4 per cent, respectively, when switchers and leavers who subsequently return to school and graduate are included. Total persistence rates which also take into account those who are still in PSE push the rates to 82 (college) and 89.8 (university) per cent.

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The development of an effective policy for addressing absenteeism in colleges of further education (FE) requires a reliable system of recording attendance. Early identification of student absence and intervention strategies can help to prevent students from dropping out of educational programs. The Further Education Development Agency (FEDA) undertook two research studies in the United Kingdom (UK) to examine the issues associated with recording student attendance and addressing student absenteeism. This report summarises the main findings from both studies. The first section examines the issues associated with absenteeism and possible responses to it. It evaluates different electronic systems for recording attendance that are currently being implemented in a number of FE colleges. Using these experiences, the report identifies the key factors to consider when selecting a new register system and suggests strategies to ensure the successful establishment of an effective attendance recording system. Show less

This study, which defines the lowering of educational or occupational ambitions by high school students as 'lost talent', looks at the extent to which talent loss occurs among high achieving students and the consequences of this on later occupational attainments. The results indicate that there is a moderate, although not negligible, rate of talent loss. The report also highlights the importance of young people, particularly young women, having occupational plans. Show less

This paper presents the treatment effects from participating in a subsidized vocational training program targeted at women residing in low-income households in India. [The authors] combine pre-intervention data with two rounds of post-intervention data from a randomized field experiment to quantify the six- and 18-month treatment effects of the program. The six-month effects of the program indicate that women who were offered the training program are six percentage points more likely to be employed, four percentage points more likely to be self-employed, work 2.5 additional hours per week, and earn 150 per cent more per month than women in the control group. Using a second round of follow-up data collected 18 months after the intervention, [the authors] find that the six-month treatment effects are all sustained over this period. [The] findings indicate credit constraints, distance, and lack of proper child care support as important barriers to program completion. Further, [the authors] also rule out two alternative mechanisms - signalling and behavior that could drive these findings. Finally, a simple cost-benefit analysis suggests that the program is highly cost-effective.

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This project aimed to explore the factors that are associated with apprentices and industry trainees at levels 3 and 4 not completing their qualification. The Industry Training Federation (ITF) and a consortium of all 12 industry training organisations (ITOs) explored the reasons why some industry trainees do not complete their qualifications. One hundred and fourteen non-completing industry trainees and apprentices were interviewed about their reasons for and the factors that contributed to the non-completion of their qualifications. A literature scan was also undertaken to gain an understanding of the issues associated with non-completion of apprenticeships/workplace qualifications, and to get an understanding of common themes across countries. The literature included research reports, articles and media resources on the perspectives of employers, apprentices/trainees, government agencies and researchers.

The research found that non-completion involves a complex mix of factors. It is the interplay between the system, the employer and the individual trainee that leads to the success or otherwise of workplace-based training. It is concluded that more, although not all, trainees can continue when there are appropriate interventions to deal with these factors. Many of the potentially effective interventions to do this are relatively simple. Largely the interventions recommended from this study relate to employer and system factors, but it is also worth considering the extent to which trainees are willing or able to utilise such interventions.

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For colleges to develop effective dropout prevention strategies, it is necessary to have a clear picture of who these early dropouts are. This report identifies distinguishing characteristics of this group by analyzing six years of transcript data on 14,429 first-time college students who in 2005 and 2006 enrolled at one of five community colleges in a single state. Of these students, 28 per cent never returned to the same college after their first semester, and the majority of these students never attended any college again. Early dropouts were, on average, older than early persisters. While early dropouts did not differ appreciably from early persisters in terms of secondary credentials, their developmental placement rates suggest that they were somewhat less academically prepared than early persisters. Early dropouts performed very poorly in their college coursework, particularly in their developmental courses. With failure and withdrawal rates in some courses exceeding 60 per cent, it is clear that the first-term experience for early dropouts was not a positive one.

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This study is the first part of a more extensive study that will examine retention in vocational education and training (VET) modules using a range of techniques. The study will: use the publicly available data provided by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) through its statistical series; investigate patterns of retention using exploratory quantitative approaches that seek to reveal the underlying structure of the data; consider the data as inherently complex and involving multivariate interaction; and explore a range of analytic and exploratory tools to identify those most useful for this data. Show less

More people are accessing higher education than ever before, and targets are being set to further increase these levels of participation. It is in the context of widening participation agendas that this study examines student aspiration, success and failure within their first experiences of assessment at university, to improve knowledge and practice to better support students from low socioeconomic status (low SES) groups. Exploring forms of cultural and social 'capital' that first year university students draw upon from their prior schooling to support their transitional journey into higher education, specifically we aim to better understand contributing influences on students to ensure success in higher education. The findings suggest that SES alone might not be an adequately sensitive category for predicting academic failure and drop out, and the literature for some time has suggested there is a need for a shift in the higher education sector in the way in which equity students are considered. The findings of this study illustrate that cliched and simplistic understandings of equity are no longer useful. Alongside this we would argue for consideration of a change in funding arrangements for students to include a widening model of point in time and place supports for students to ensure their likelihood of success prior to and throughout their first year of higher education.

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