Reducing vocational education inequality for students from refugee backgrounds

ABSTRACT

Vocational decisions made at school have significant long term impacts on young people’s life chances, their opportunities for securing decent jobs and economic growth for themselves, their families and communities. In the short term, their aspirations dictate the decisions they make about educational pathways in post-compulsory years of schooling and vocational and higher education. For young people from already marginalised backgrounds, the quality of support they have in making these decisions is crucially important. This paper examines a rapidly expanding vocational education program specifically designed for students with refugee backgrounds that was codeveloped between a state education authority and a community service provider in Sydney, Australia. Through an ecological understanding of individuals as nested within interrelated networks, this paper explores the perspectives of stakeholders ranging from the educators, careers teachers, employers, civic partners, and, crucially, the young people themselves in order to determine whether and through what means key program elements meet the needs of students from a refugee background and where gaps in the program ecology need to be addressed.

KEYWORDS:

• Vocational education
• work education
• refugee education
• educational inequality
• ecological approach

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 RAW is funded by NSW Department of Education. We thank the Department of Education for their support throughout this study, in particular Brendan Gembitsky, Manager Work Placement Coordination Program, Pathways and Transitions. We would also like to acknowledge the research assistance provided by Cymbeline Buhler through the study.

2 Western Sydney University HREC Approval H13121, NSW Department of Education Approval (SERAP) 2019062

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Department of Education NSW: [Grant Number NULL].

Notes on contributors

Susanne Gannon

Susanne Gannon is Professor of Education in the School of Education at Western Sydney University. Her research interests include educational equity, secondary schooling, curriculum and pedagogy.

Rachael Jacobs

Rachael Jacobs is Senior Lecturer in Creative Arts Education at Western Sydney University whose areas of research include creativity and assessment, creative justice through the arts and embodied pedagogies. Rachael has facilitated arts projects in community settings all over Australia, including in refugee communities, in prisons and in women's refuges.

Danielle Tracey

Danielle Tracey is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at Western Sydney University. Her research interests include educational and developmental psychology, disability studies, and evaluation.