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Education and career pathway decision making in rural, regional and remote (RRR) areas is crucial for building strong societies and economies across RRR Australia, a point made by recent reviews of RRR education (Napthine et al., 2019; Halsey, 2018). Rather than targeting school students in their education and career pathway decision making, this project developed and piloted a model focussed on working alongside communities to build community capacity to support education and career pathway decisions of school students and adults. Schools currently have limited support from outside the education sector in providing career information and education. There is a need to embed knowledge within communities about careers of today and the future, and the pathways to them, so that this knowledge is readily accessible to those making pathway decisions. This project aimed to establish a model to fill gaps in community knowledge and give confidence to the community members who are key influencers of young people's and others' career and education pathway decisions. The project adopted a placed-based, whole of RRR community approach to targeting and building the capacity of these key influencers.

This project addresses a key question: How can a whole of community approach best equip key influencers to inform and support low [socioeconomic status] SES and RRR student higher education participation? It also addresses two sub-questions: (1) How might a whole of community approach work effectively? (2) How can key influencers best be informed and supported in RRR areas? This project designed, trialled and evaluated whole of community, place-based career and education pathway information programs for adults in three RRR communities who are the key influencers of young peoples' and others' education and career pathway decisions.

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This report details the findings and recommendations from the 18-month, National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE)-funded project 'Higher education career advice for primary and secondary school students from low socioeconomic status backgrounds'. The study critically investigated best-practice initiatives in career education for students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, including those in regional, rural and remote areas of Australia. Having said that, it is important to note that regional, rural and remote settings should not be converged, as great diversity exists amongst residents and communities within and between them. The purpose of the study was to establish overriding best-practice principles to guide career education provided to school students and non-school-leavers who are considering higher education and other pathways. In doing so, the project sought to gain a better understanding of the ways that young people from low SES backgrounds may consider their educational and vocational futures, and to provide suggested best practices in the provision of career education for this cohort.

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For students studying at university, maintaining optimum mental health and wellbeing is imperative to participate and engage in all aspects of learning. Because of the repercussions from the disruptions of 2020, Australian university students have been under immense pressure as they adapted to considerably different study conditions. Prevented from being on campus and switching to online study mode differed from their previous experiences and expectations of university study. The findings from this study confirm that a significant proportion of university students - two out of three in our study - experienced high to very high levels of psychological distress.

This study provides a national snapshot of the prevalence rates of psychological distress and mapping of structures and processes available in universities that impact student wellbeing, albeit on a small scale. Recommendations and practical strategies are based on the findings from this research, acknowledging that the increased levels of psychological distress for current and future university students will remain long after the economy recovers, the borders reopen, and Australians learn to live with the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 virus. Additionally, for those students experiencing the bushfires of 2020, the effects still linger due to communities' physical devastation, negatively impacting students' wellbeing.

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