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Student Equity in Australian Higher Education pp 125–141Cite as

Access, Achievement and Outcomes Among Students from Non-English Speaking Backgrounds

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Abstract

The particular complexities associated with the non-English speaking background (NESB) equity category highlight the need for a more sophisticated equity framework. As will be shown, the definition and identification of the NESB category is problematic, which is compounded by the difficulty of measuring equity outcomes for NESB people in higher education. While NESB people as a whole are well represented in higher education, particular sub-groups are severely under-represented. Moreover, even as single group, NESB people under-achieve at university and are severely disadvantaged in terms of employment after graduation. Hence, the predicament of NESB people highlights the need for a policy approach that targets disadvantage at all points of the higher education lifecycle: access, achievement and graduate outcomes. After providing the background to the creation of the NESB equity category and contextualising its current status, the three stages of the high education lifecycle – access, achievement and graduate outcomes – will be successively used to examine the current predicament of NESB people, as well as the policy implications for the NESB category and equity framework generally.

Some of the content in this chapter has been published in similar forms in (Mestan and Harvey 2014)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This figure was calculated by dividing the number of NESB enrolments by the total number of NESB people in the Australian population. This was the method used in the Bradley Review, whereas the figures from the 1996 Australia Education Council report used the population aged 15–64.

  2. 2.

    The ‘success ratio’, sometimes referred to as the progression ratio, compares the success/ progression rates of a group in question (such as NESB) with another group (such as ESB). A ratio of 1 represents equality between the two groups, more than 1 means that the group succeeds at higher rates, and less than 1 means the group succeeds at lower rates.

  3. 3.

    The Beyond Graduation Survey (BGS) survey was a much smaller sample than the AGS. Consequently, the differences between NESB and ESB students are not statistically significant, unlike the AGS, which is purportedly a census.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Access and Achievement Research Unit, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Kemran Mestan

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  1. Kemran Mestan
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Correspondence to Kemran Mestan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Andrew Harvey

  2. Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Catherine Burnheim

  3. La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Matthew Brett

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Mestan, K. (2016). Access, Achievement and Outcomes Among Students from Non-English Speaking Backgrounds. In: Harvey, A., Burnheim, C., Brett, M. (eds) Student Equity in Australian Higher Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0315-8_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0315-8_8

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