Tracking Access to Tertiary Education

The Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle Australia, in collaboration with the UK’s Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) team, invites you to attend Tracking Access to Tertiary Education, a one-day symposium focused on identifying the potentials and pitfalls of tracking access and participation in tertiary education.

HEAT was introduced in the UK in 2011 to target, monitor and evaluate outreach programmes, and to track students’ progression from school into higher education and beyond. In recent years, HEAT has expanded its mission to “track engagement in outreach activities and build evidence of future student achievement to prove the value of outreach”.

In Australia, the Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Programme (HEPPP) has provided millions of dollars in funding to higher education institutions to encourage and support access and participation in higher education. The evaluation of the outreach, access and support programmes the HEPPP has funded is challenging, however, not least of all as the tracking of post-school outcomes for the students involved is problematic; without a national, cross-sectoral student identifier, only local and sometimes regional efforts to track progress toward higher education have been possible.

Attendees of the Tracking Access to Tertiary Education symposium will engage in the emerging conversation on the feasibility and/or desirability (both technical and ethical) of tracking WP outreach and subsequent participation in tertiary education in Australia, and how the sector might navigate the associated challenges to improve equity of access to education for underrepresented groups of students.

For more information, and to register, please visit the Tracking Access to Tertiary Education Eventbrite page.