Peer-mentoring of students in rural and low ses schools

Investigation 1: intentions, achievement and attainment of metropolitan and rural students

Our primary interest in the first investigation is in the influence of location and socioeconomic status on tertiary education participation. We use a simple dichotomous classification of location (metropolitan or rural). More precise information on location is available, but the number of students in remote locations is small and could lead to unreliable estimates, so the non-metropolitan location classifications were merged.

As we note above, rural and low-SES students are under-represented in higher education, with several factors identified in the literature considered to contribute to this. There is some disagreement about differences between metropolitan and rural students’ motivations and aspirations for post-school education: Alloway et al. (2004) argue that rural students hold high aspirations for tertiary study, while James (2002) contends that rural students have lower aspirations for post-school education.

We represent the problem of understanding the factors that influence tertiary education participation as a simplified sequence of relationships, as shown in figure 1. Tertiary participation, especially higher education, depends upon successful completion of Year 12. School attainment is likely to be related to student achievement and this in turn is predicted by attitude towards school and by aspirations for school completion and post-school study and employment. It seems likely, and indeed it is known from previous research, that some demographic characteristics are related to lower aspirations, lower achievement and a reduced likelihood of Year 12 completion and tertiary education participation. As highlighted above, the Bradley review (2008) drew attention to the low participation rates in tertiary education of low-SES and rural youth. Other differences in school attainment and tertiary participation have been associated with gender, language background, immigrant status and family structure (Curtis 2008; Curtis & McMillan 2008).

Figure Postulated relationships between sets of variables in understanding influences on school completion and tertiary education participation

As a consequence of the findings of the Bradley review (2008), we investigate the influences of two particular demographic characteristics — location and socioeconomic status — on tertiary participation, but given the factors that mediate demographic characteristics and tertiary participation, we also examine the relationships between these characteristics and attitude — achievement and attainment.

4Data

We used data from the 2003 (Y03) cohort of 15-year-old students recruited into LSAY. The majority of the 10 370 students were in Year 10 in 2003 and they were tracked to 2010 (the most recent year for which data are available), by which time 4903 participants, whose average age is 22.7 years, remained. By this time, all who were going to complete secondary school had done so (most in 2005), and most who were planning tertiary study had commenced it. However, it should be noted that individuals might delay entry into tertiary education for some years, so the final proportion of this cohort to enter post-school education will be slightly higher than that reported here.

The LSAY dataset includes information on the following variables:

Demographic characteristics: variables are available for gender; location (metropolitan or rural); language background (English or other than English as the main home language); immigrant status (Australian-born of Australian parents, Australian-born, but with at least one parent born in another country, or born in another country); family structure (nuclear family or other); number of siblings; and economic, social and cultural status (ESCS, see OECD 2005, p.382). We use the Council of Australian Governments’ definition of low-socioeconomic status as being the lowest quartile of the ESCS variable.

In this investigation, we classify location as either metropolitan or non-metropolitan (including regional cities and rural locations). While information is classified into finer categories, the small numbers of individuals in rural locations, coupled with attrition from the study, render the use of these finer classifications unreliable. For convenience, we use the term ‘rural’ to refer to all individuals in other than metropolitan locations.

Attitude and aspiration: variables are available for attitudes towards school; perceptions of teacher—student relationships; sense of belonging at school; intention to complete Year 12 at school and post-school study intentions.

Academic achievement: the first wave of the LSAY data collection uses the results of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey and testing. Achievement results are available in four domains: mathematics, reading, science and problem-solving. We use a composite measure of achievement based on all four domains.

School attainment: using responses to questions in successive waves of the longitudinal survey, students’ progress through school is tracked. In particular, we are interested in whether students completed Year 12, whether they reported receiving a tertiary entrance score (here referred to as an ATAR — Australian Tertiary Admission Rank), and if so, what that score is.

Post-school study: this includes participation in any post-school education and training. In this study, we did not examine completion of tertiary study, simply whether and which forms of tertiary study were commenced. We identified no tertiary study, commencement of a lower certificate (certificate I or II), a higher certificate (certificate III or IV), a diploma program, or a degree course.

Each of the demographic, attitude and aspiration variables was selected for inclusion in the analysis, as previous research has shown that these variables are related to school achievement and attainment. Several measures of school achievement are used. Data are available on students’ performance at age 15 on tests of reading, mathematical and scientific literacy and problem-solving. Data are also available on the highest level of school attained, and from this, a dichotomous variable is derived for Year 12 completion. In addition, information is available on whether students reported an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank, and if so what that score was. Achieving an ATAR score is thought to be more indicative of the quality of educational attainment than completion of Year 12.