POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION

Research, Change, and Care Experienced Postsecondary Education

Some of you will already know that my 2015 doctorate was on the education of New Zealand care leavers who went to university. It was an in-depth qualitative study with seven care experienced young people who were either at university or had graduated. This was New Zealand’s first ever known research on the education of children in care, and had important things to say about care experienced young people, relationships, expectations, our child welfare and education systems…and serendipity. 

 While the findings seemed to resonate with all, including the Secretariat of the 2015 Expert Panel on the Modernising of Child, Youth and Family, if I am honest at the time the research did not lead to the much-needed necessary policy, let alone practice, shifts that I had hoped for. Looking back it was of course very naïve of me to think that a single research study, and particularly a self-funded one, would likely do so. Or maybe it was necessary self-delusion to motivate me through seven years of study!

 However five years on, last Thursday, it was my privilege to facilitate for our Tertiary Education Commission, what I believe to be New Zealand’s first ever meeting of government agencies, NGOs and universities and other post-secondary providers, on care experienced learners. The workshop included presentations from Associate Professor Neil Harrison from the University of Oxford and my colleague Associate Professor Andrew Harvey from La Trobe in Melbourne. Both talked to the range of research, policy and practice initiatives, and the significant improvements that they are seeing. For example in England it is now estimated that 30% of care-experienced adults will access higher (mainly degree level) education at some point in their lives, while in more recent developments in Victoria the Raising Expectations project is supporting over 200 care experienced tertiary students at La Trobe University, Federation University Australia and Swinburne University of Technology. 

 As well as being eminent researchers, I’d also describe both Neil and Andrew as thought leaders in this field whose influence goes way beyond the world of research. However, their own work also ‘stands on the shoulders of giants’ including other researchers such as David Berridge, Claire Cameron, Graham Connelly, Felicity Fletcher-Campbell and Sonia Jackson in the UK; Robbie Gilligan in Ireland; Ingrid Höjer and Bo Vinnerljung in Sweden; Andrea Zetlin and Peter Pecora in the US, and Bob Flynn in Canada. Internationally, researchers have been particularly influential in achieving change in relation to the education of children in care. 

 In New Zealand we have now started a national conversation. On Thursday there was a powerful consensus in the room that this was an important equity issue that we needed to collectively address. We know in our work with children, young people and their families that change can come about in different ways. Indeed the title that I came up with for my doctoral thesis was Slipping down Ladders and Climbing up Snakes! Looking forward to continued conversations, collaboration and change in New Zealand and elsewhere.

I’d love to hear your thoughts! You can email me at: iain@betteroutcomes.co.nz

Kia kaha (Stay Strong).

Iain