Research

Introduction

Widening participation, success and completion of tertiary education is a policy priority in Australia. However, efforts to widen participation are consistently falling short. The Matching for Success project aims to target this gap by supporting school leavers to have success in their transitions to tertiary education. This project aims to design and validate a new, efficient, national model for selecting school leavers for entry to tertiary courses, so that a broader range of school leavers can enter and succeed. It builds on new assessments and certification used by schools which reliably profile each learners’ unique strengths and capabilities. The model, to be validated jointly with school and tertiary sector agencies, is expected to provide better information about the match of student capabilities to a course’s requirements. This is expected to benefit university selectors by enhancing their understanding of applicants, and students, especially disadvantaged students, by building confidence and understanding of their capacity to thrive.

The Opportunity

A new range of credentials and assessments are available in a small but increasing number schools in Australia both at senior secondary level and earlier levels of schooling. These credentials aim to recognise student attainment in attributes such as collaboration and thinking skills that are not able to be examined or represented in current assessment processes that underpin Yr 12 Senior Secondary Certificates (SSCs). A number of schools in Australia are leading the way to assess these attributes we call transferable learning competencies (TLCs) in a robust, trusted and comparable form to students and recruiters.

This is important in an era in Australia where broadening tertiary participation is a priority. Every citizen will need to engage in and be capable of agile learning as knowledge in any domain grows and changes, as rapid technology change continually alters the profile of skills required to thrive at school and beyond, and as every citizen needs to be a competent, connected self-directed learner.

TLCs are the drivers of this work, encompassing the range of attributes needed including social and interpersonal skills, skills of knowing how to learn, thinking skills, skills for harnessing drive and reflection, and skills related to collaboration and agency in learning. These skills are required to develop expertise in any domain of learning in a form that enable the person and the community to thrive. The Matching for Success project will investigate how assessment and recognition of TLCs can be used to better match school leavers to tertiary study.

Research Questions

1. To what degree can a model to support selection processes using matching of the capabilities required for success in a tertiary course to broad profiles of a school leaver’s learning capabilities improve school leavers’ transition to tertiary for use nationally and at scale?
2. To what degree is the model based on matching valid (appropriate for purpose) and support success of a wide range of school leavers at university, especially the educationally disadvantaged?
3. What policy reforms, community engagement and practical changes are required to implement the proposed model in relation to university selection, assessment and senior secondary certification?

The Project

Widening participation, success and completion of tertiary education is a policy priority in Australia. However, efforts to widen participation are consistently falling short. The Matching for Success project aims to target this gap by supporting school leavers to have success in their transitions to tertiary education. The project aims to develop a matching method to enable school leavers to use a learner profile containing a holistic representation of their skills and capabilities for tertiary admissions to select students who best match their courses.  It will do this by:

• Developing a nationally-applicable and scalable method to digitally match profiles of each student’s broad learning capabilities to the specific capabilities and qualities required for success in a tertiary course
• Improving predictive validity, efficiency, transparency and fairness of entry processes
• Empowering all students, especially disadvantaged students to apply according to their strengths

Providing tertiary institutions with better information for selection and subsequent provision of courses

Research Design and Methodology

The project is grounded in validation theory based on the work of Messick (1995) and Kane (2013), testing the fitness of new approaches in the hands of stakeholders including schools, students and tertiary institution selectors.

The project will be an empirical longitudinal study spanning three years, collecting data from three cohorts of school leavers. Using this data, we will investigate:

• The validity of a nationally-applicable and scalable method to digitally match profiles of each student’s broad learning capabilities to the specific capabilities and qualities required for success in a tertiary course
• The indicators of success in transitions to tertiary courses
• The predictive validity, efficiency, transparency and fairness of entry processes
• Improvement of agency in all students, especially disadvantaged students to apply according to their strengths
• Improvement of information to tertiary institutions for selection and recruitment and subsequent provision of courses