ANU Archives

What’s in a name? Enabling education in Australia 

The Australian Government announced significant changes last year to programs that enable students from non-high school pathways to transition into university. These programs began in Australia 50 years ago and are broadly referred to as enabling education. There are 48 programs now operated by universities across Australia. Enabling education is defined legislatively as a course “provided to a person for the purpose of enabling that person to undertake a course leading to a higher education award”.

Enabling education operates free-of-cost to domestic students who don’t meet current entry requirements to enter an undergraduate level program. These programs are key to widening educational participation, especially for students from recognised equity backgrounds.  

The government renamed those programs “FEE-FREE Uni Ready”, including $350 million in increased funding and increased student places. It also committed to work with providers to “professionalise and increase the quality and consistency of courses” and improve their “portability”.

Same goal, different names

In the course of this short announcement, the terms ‘enabling’, ‘pathway’ and ‘preparatory’ were used alongside FEE-FREE Uni Ready, and other terms are also associated with this field of education including ‘foundation studies’, ‘bridging programs’ and ‘access courses’. Different programs also utilise program names that incorporate these terms or others such as ‘steps’, ‘track’, and ‘link’. Ostensibly, these courses share the same goal.

Recent benchmarking by the National Association of Enabling Educators highlights these programs usually include explicit teaching of study preparation. They also usually include communication skills, academic literacies and/or numeracies. But providers do not use the same language to refer to the programs they offer. Even when they use the same naming conventions they are not necessarily referring to the same program types. There is variation throughout the sector over length of study time, use of fees and program entry requirements, for example. The variation in terms, and whether the same program name even means the same thing between providers, is mind boggling! 

Current benchmarking exercises seek to make sense of the various naming conventions around enabling education. They rely upon a shared understanding of what enabling education is: a pre-Bachelor course of study enabling university entry. However, we know that this is not the only way that enabling education can be constructed. The government’s advice to university providers says this: “A provider’s purpose in enrolling a student in a course of instruction determines whether it is an enabling course. Therefore, a course of instruction may be an enabling course for only some students undertaking it.”

It continues that even courses that bear credit can constitute an enabling course, though credit bearing courses cannot constitute the majority of the program of study.

The eye of the beholder

It seems, then, that what constitutes enabling lies in the eye of the beholder. It is likely that enabling funding is used diversely. For example, it may be used for programs sitting within or alongside undergraduate level study. It may also be used within high school outreach programs that assist students to transition out of secondary education and into a further enabling program or directly into undergraduate study. As this is not commonly understood as ‘enabling’, it is not necessarily captured in national typologies of enabling education or in benchmarking.

Importantly, it is not captured in our conversations about whether enabling education is best understood as a field of education that assists students not only into higher education but also through an often-non-linear educational journey that continues beyond the entry point of undergraduate study. 

Our nomenclature shouldn’t limit our understanding of where enabling should ‘sit’ as a mechanism for supporting students and improving outcomes.

The term ‘enabling education’ is not commonly used outside Australia. And other terms do not adequately translate into an international context. For example, “preparatory” is the term proposed by the Australian Universities Accord to replace enabling education. However, this can create a problematic and false equivalency to American preparatory schools, whose function is entirely different to ‘preparation’ in an Australian enabling context.

Within Australia, the use of distinct naming conventions for different programs impacts the legitimacy of enabling education as a particular field of education, taught by those with distinct and recognisable expertise. If we accept that enabling programs represent a particular branch of knowledge with expertise required to teach it, it deserves a consistent name that represents it as a field of education. It is questionable whether ‘enabling education’ is adequate for this purpose.

What we call these courses matters

The conflation of terms like FEE-FREE Uni Ready (a name reserved for particular programs) with a field of education or discipline being taught does not help with efforts to form a meaningful and invariable name. It also inhibits our ability to understand what it is about enabling education as a field that is distinct, and what exists in parallel with other transition pedagogies, or preparatory practices. If these courses are simply about ‘enabling’ students to enter undergraduate study, what exactly do they even need to cover to prepare students and who determines this? 

What we call these courses matters. In practical terms the diverse naming conventions of enabling programs presents a barrier to finding and accessing these programs. These programs are particularly aimed at students often marginalised from higher education – so this naming problem may exacerbate this marginalisation. Naming conventions matter too. They tell students how they are viewed by the university. They also tell students how they should think about themselves. In a NSW context, for example, ‘pathway’ is often used to refer to enabling programs. However, it is often preceded by the word ‘alternative’ – an alternate pathway to the completion of the Higher School Certificate. It implies that enabling education is secondary.

And is enabling the right word? It has the loaded and problematic inference that students are not already ‘able’. Our terminology matters in framing enabling education, particularly for students who have experienced educational disadvantage.  

We still don’t know what’s going to happen

The FEE-FREE Uni Ready proposal was slated for implementation from 2025. But at the time of writing (February 2025) no further substantive clarification has been provided by government. That leaves much of the government-led work in formalising sector-wide benchmarks and shared (read: portable) understandings, curricula, and expectations unfinished.

This variability limits the portability of certificates for students. It also limits of awareness of these programs, even within a program’s own institution. That, in turn, impacts the critical and evaluative interest of educational researchers both within and, importantly, outside of enabling education.

Enabling education represents a real space for changing individual fortunes and helping students to develop fulfilling careers. But it is also as an opportunity for powerful knowledge and recognition of why access to education matters. It should also provide a space for deeper and critical understandings of higher education and its distributive role in society.

A public good

Enabling education is a public good, a true legacy of Whitlam-era policies that assert that higher education is for everyone. How we refer to this field of study matters. It dictates what enabling education does, how and when across a student’s journey.

Naming matters in how we continue to “professionalise” this form of education as a set of practices and pedagogies, and operationalise it for educators and researchers who work within it and the students who seek to benefit from it. It matters to the public, who fund it.

Emma Hamilton is a senior lecturer of history and convenor of the Open Foundation (Online) Program at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her work relates to history on film, and to widening participation in higher education. Matthew Bunn is a seniorl lecturer in academic pathways at James Cook University. His research is grounded in the sociology of equity and widening participation in higher education. Kieran Balloo is joining Curtin University and is a visiting senior research fellow in the Surrey Institute of Education at the University of Surrey, UK. His research has a focus on student transitions, equity, and wellbeing, and it emphasises the importance of innovative and inclusive educational practices to support diverse student populations. Sally Baker is an associate professor of Migration and Education in POLIS at ANU. Her work centres on policy and practice related to equity in higher education, particularly with students with forced migration backgrounds.

School exclusion: what this heartbreaking work tells us

Numbers show school exclusion is on the rise. But there is very little evidence to show it is an effective mechanism for improving or managing student behaviour. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, students with a disability, or living in out of home care continue to be significantly overrepresented in suspension and exclusion statistics. These patterns of systemic exclusion are part of a much longer story. Ahead of the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s inquiry into the education system, what might we learn from this history that can help us to end school exclusion?

School exclusion today

Across Australia today, schools disproportionately exclude Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Data from 2019 shows that in Queensland and NSW, schools directed 25% of all exclusions at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students despite making up just over 10% of full-time state school enrolments in QLD and only 8% in NSW. The likelihood of exclusion increases even more for students with intersecting experiences such as living with disability or in out of home care. There are also connections between inadequate and unfair schooling systems and contact with the criminal justice system. However, access to up-to-date school exclusion data remains difficult, limiting public scrutiny and accountability for the full extent of school exclusion across Australia.

The history of school exclusion

Beginning in 1883, multiple generations of Aboriginal students at Yass were segregated, excluded and denied access to public schooling. The 70-years of school exclusion at Yass is just one of many stories of school exclusion detailed in a recent research report. For the first time, the history of school exclusion of Indigenous students across Australia has been recorded in one place. It confirms what families and communities have said for generations: the education system has a systemic racism problem. But Indigenous communities have always resisted and organised to fight exclusion. The historical record is replete with stories of families fighting back in diverse ways including strikes, organised protests, letters and petitions, media and legal campaigns.

What we found

Our research found exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students occurred across all state school systems in Australia. We found systemic exclusion, that is, exclusion in all states and territories, from the foundation of the first education systems in the 1870s to the present. We found two main types of exclusion:

The failure of governments to provide access to schooling for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students by either not ensuring access or by outright denying access.
The disproportionate use of exclusionary measures, such as suspension and expulsion, against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

Historically, Indigenous students were excluded based on explicitly racialised justifications. Today, modern forms of exclusion are represented as race ‘neutral’, yet schools use disciplinary exclusion measures disproportionately against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, compounding the educational debt that is owed.

This history highlights the explicitly racist origins of school exclusion today. It also makes clear that school exclusion is not a new issue but rather is part of a system that has yet to fundamentally rethink how it supports young people.

Problems with current policies

Exclusion has proven ineffective in addressing the underlying causes of student ‘misbehaviour’. In fact, most data shows that once a student is excluded, they are likely to be excluded again. Yet school systems in Australia continue to rely on exclusion as a form of punishment.

Our research also found troubling continuities between past and present policies. From the outset, education systems gave police powers to investigate and bring charges against families for their child’s non-attendance, sometimes leading to the removal of children from their families. Today, police continue to play a central role in managing school absenteeism in many states. In Queensland, this relationship has been formalised. Of 57 secondary schools currently in QLD’s ‘School Based Policing Program’, 41 have an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student population higher than the state figure of 8-10%. This suggests a link between the racial profiling, surveillance, and over-policing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in schools, and their overrepresentation in processes of school exclusion.

Policy fixation

Another problem is policy fixation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander school attendance and disadvantage which have dominated the policy-making space in Indigenous education. Yet, there has rarely been a focus on the impact of the exclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. In fact, notably, our research suggests that discipline policies, suspensions and expulsions are rarely mentioned in national policy documents and inquiries.

Finally, access to data remains difficult. This is despite national agreement for increased levels of transparency around school attendance. Limited availability of data on school exclusion in Australia prevents a full investigation of the racialised nature of exclusion and hinders public accountability.

So what does work?

First and foremost, disaggregated data needs to be made publicly available to increase transparency. Only then can we have a full picture of which students are being excluded which can be used to hold governments and schools to account.

Second, we need to shift away from school exclusion as a form of discipline towards more restorative approaches that emphasise repairing relationships over and above the need for punishment. Restorative justice practices are already being implemented in communities across Australia and numerous school districts in other countries are implementing restorative practices in schools as an alternative to exclusionary discipline. We have clear examples to draw on, we just need the willingness to do so.

Lastly, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have fought and continue to fight resolutely to access schooling for their children and to resist discriminatory practices and policies. Today, organisations like the National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition are taking up this fight, advocating for the end of school exclusion and for a self-determined education system that reflects and embodies Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing.

How do we end school exclusion?

We developed a School Exclusion 101 – Youth Guide. It aims to equip young people with the knowledge and tools to challenge exclusion in schools. The guide includes an audit tool that young people can use to reflect on whether their school’s student behaviour policy (or code of conduct) is inclusive, transparent and fair. It provides a starting point to discuss ways to make such policies more inclusive.

The report underscores the need for greater attention to the historical foundations of discrimination in Australian school systems. Acknowledging this history and advocating for greater truth-telling is a pivotal step towards addressing systemic inequalities.

From left to right: Mati Keynes is a non-Indigenous historian living and working on Wurundjeri Country. Mati is currently McKenzie Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Education at the University of Melbourne. Samara Hand is a Worimi/Biripi woman born on Awabakal Country in New South Wales, Australia. She is currently a PhD candidate at UNSW, visiting scholar at the University of Manitoba, and a co-founder of the National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition. Beth Marsden is a non-Indigenous historian living and working on Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country. Currently, she is ARC Laureate Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Research Centre for Deep History at the Australian National University. Archie Thomas is a Chancellors Research Fellow at University of Technology Sydney where his research focuses on how institutions like schools and the media exclude and include historically marginalised groups.