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The Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success acknowledges Indigenous peoples across Australia as the Traditional Owners of the lands on which the nation’s campuses are situated. With a history spanning more than 60,000 years as the original educators, Indigenous peoples hold a unique place in our nation. We recognise the importance of their knowledge and culture, and reflect the principles of participation, equity, and cultural respect in our work. We pay our respects to Elders past, present, and future, and consider it an honour to learn from our Indigenous colleagues, partners, and friends.

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You are reading: The impact of a school-selected Year 11–12 outreach program on tertiary applications and enrolments: A pragmatic cluster randomised trial

Trial overview

Registered
Users Priority Students: Identifies with at least one equity category, Low socio-economic status backgrounds
Academic Cap Stage of Intervention: Pre Higher Education
Chart Line Outcomes: Access

What was trialed

The study examines the light touch, informational outreach, by providing university “course guides” for Year 11 and 12 secondary students and compares this with more comprehensive Widening Participation (WP) activities to this same cohort of students.

The course guides will be selected by each school, encompassing a variety of different subject areas relevant to study at each university. The course guides are existing marketing materials developed for schools by each university.

The WP activity targets underrepresented schools through university–school partnerships, allows flexible selection of workshops addressing their students’ barriers to higher education, and delivers content through near-peer mentors. The offered workshops are tailored to students’ barriers, selected in partnership with schools, addressing academic, financial, and structural challenges relevant to their students.

It is expected that the WP activity will result in greater outcomes, demonstrated through improved knowledge, self-efficacy, and motivation for Year 11 and 12 students, leading to increased aspirations, tertiary application, and enrolment rates, particularly amongst those who may not have considered higher education otherwise.

What was found

The results will be available in May 2027.

How the trial was delivered

This study uses a pragmatic randomised trial approach. The pragmatic design treats schools’ choices around workshop content, timing, and delivery mode as integral to the intervention, recognising that variation in exposure reflects the real-world implementation of WP.
Eligible state schools are drawn from existing university partnerships, spanning those with no WP engagement for Year 11 and 12 students. These schools are stratified by prior outreach engagement to Year 10 students, and the school-level historical tertiary application rates, and randomly allocated, as clusters, to receive either the WP workshops or university course guides.
Data is captured through a longitudinal student-level survey tracking individual outcomes over time, and these surveys will include:

  • Baseline questionnaire, capturing students’ initial orientation toward higher education, and aspirations, as well as demographics.
  • Post-workshop questionnaire (WP group only), measuring short-term learning, mindset changes, and perceived content relevance following each workshop.
  • Follow-up questionnaire, collecting self-reported aspirations (Year 11) and tertiary applications and enrolment information (Year 12) in early 2027.

The impact analysis will compare outcomes between students in WP and course guide group-schools, adjusting for baseline characteristics to improve precision.
The study is being undertaken in 2026–2027, and is being delivered by Deakin University, Swinburne University, and the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES).