Benchmarking Australian enabling programs for a national framework of standards

Authors

Charmaine Davis
Chris Cook
Suzi Syme
Sarah Dempster
Lisa Duffy, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Sarah Hattam
George Lambrinidis
Kathy Lawson
Stuart Levy

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Student Success

Volume

14

Issue

2

First Page

41

Last Page

49

Publisher

QUT Library

School

Access & Equity

RAS ID

61859

Comments

Davis, C., Cook, C., Syme, S., Dempster, S., Duffy, L., Hattam, S., . . . Levy, S. (2023). Benchmarking Australian enabling programs for a national framework of standards. Student Success, 14(2), 41-49. https://doi.org/10.5204/ssj.2841

Abstract

Enabling education programs in Australia assist students, who would otherwise have been excluded from higher education, to transition into undergraduate study. These programs emerged independently in response to the needs of individual universities and the varying cohorts of students they serve. The exclusion of these programs from the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) has meant they remain unregulated, with no national framework for standards. The development of academic standards is a dynamic, consensus driven process, and benchmarking provides a method through which academics from across institutions can work in partnership to reach shared understandings and improve and align practices. This practice report outlines the results of the first comprehensive cross-institutional benchmarking project involving nine Australian universities and demonstrates there is shared understanding of the standards of enabling programs between institutions. These findings will contribute to the establishment of national standards for enabling programs in Australia.

DOI

10.5204/ssj.2841

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.