Lead organisation by interventionInterventions identify how the organisation intends to achieve its stated objectives. Most organisations focus effort on improved career education and increasing student engagement in secondary and tertiary education; these are the top two mechanisms used by secondary schools, TAFEs, community organisations, non-government organisations, industry and state government.
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Community Organisation: Not-for-Profit Organisation operating locally only e.g. LLENs, neighbourhood centre, community centre etc.; Non-Government Organisation (NGO): Not-for-Profit Organisation operating across multiple localities e.g. The Smith Family, MacKillop, Foundation for Young Australians, Hands on Learning, Beacon Foundation.
Initiatives with the objective of improving attitudes toward education by regionThe number of initiatives aiming to improve attitudes increases when a student enters secondary school, and peaks in the middle to latter secondary years. State-wide initiatives that aim to improve attitudes toward education are most strongly targeted toward Year 11 and 12 students. Students who leave school before graduating, both pre and post-Year 10, are not targeted by intervention initiatives as highly as students who stay in school. Those outside the school system at varying learning stages (school leavers, year 12 graduates, mature age students, higher education and VET students) are not targeted by initiatives as highly as students who are in the school system. Understanding student numbers within these cohorts (compared to those in schools) would assist in establishing whether this is an appropriate split (NB this data is not currently available).
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Cohort by interventionTwo types of interventions are most commonly used during the secondary school years: increasing student engagement in secondary education and tertiary education opportunities; and the provision of improved career education, including up-skilling of career educators and information about post-secondary education opportunities. The provision of transition and financial support is not as prevalent as other types of interventions. This is the case right across the student cohort spectrum.
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Parent and community engagement by regionOver two-thirds of initiatives identified do not incorporate a parent and community engagement component, despite the fact that available literature strongly emphasises the importance of such strategies. There are consistently less initiatives with a parent and community engagement intervention component across most regions (Gippsland is the exception where the majority of initiatives have a parent and community engagement component).
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Financial support componentAvailable literature suggests that the provision of financial support, while insufficient in itself, is a necessary precondition to raising education aspiration. The majority of initiatives identified do not incorporate a financial support component as part of the intervention, with 82 programs lacking this mechanism. Where financial support is provided, it is not typically integrated with other intervention mechanisms. A limited number of initiatives identified incorporate financial support with one or additional interventions identified in the literature review, although the scale of this support is unknown.
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Multi-faceted interventions by student cohortMulti-faceted interventions have been defined as a single initiative that use more than one type of intervention to achieve their objective(s). Multi-faceted interventions are targeted toward students in secondary school, with 64 to 74 per cent of initiatives delivered during these school years incorporating more than one type of intervention. Interventions aimed at school leavers at any stage (early school leavers, school leavers and Year 12 graduates) do not demonstrate such a strong emphasis on multi-faceted approaches, with only a little over half of initiatives targeted at these cohorts having this characteristic.
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Multi-faceted interventions by regionAll individual regions have a higher proportion of multi-faceted initiatives than singular intervention initiatives. The chart below shows that multi-faceted initiatives make up 52 per cent of all initiatives identified. In contrast, the majority of state-wide initiatives (56 per cent) are singular interventions. It is important to note that some initiatives operate across multiple regions, although they are not state-wide, and in these instances have been counted as operating in each region. It is therefore important to note the overall total, which counts each initiative only once.
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Multi-faceted initiatives showing type of interventions usedThe multi-faceted initiatives analysed are shown below. The combination of intervention mechanisms used for each initiative is also indicated. Multi-faceted initiatives usually include provision of career education and increasing student engagement components.
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Financial support typesIncreased provision of, and accessibility to, financial support has been identified as an intervention gap in initiatives delivered in Victoria. Further analysis of initiatives that do provide a financial support component demonstrates that they provide discrete support with limited coordination. Figure 1 below indicates the types of financial support identified, and the lack of universal accessibility to regional students requiring financial support.
Figure 1: Spectrum of financial support from the level of the individual through to universal/strategic financial support
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