Search

Although 'child safety' is now a national policy priority in Australia, there is little research exploring the "practices" in schools that contribute to children and young people's felt sense of safety and wellbeing. Drawing on a mixed-method Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery project, this article presents findings from interviews with school staff (N = 10), leaders (N = 5) and nine focus groups with students (N = 58), in primary and secondary schools in three Australian states (New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia). We employ relational ethics, recognition theory and the theory of practice architectures to explore practices at school that support student wellbeing and safety. The findings contribute significantly to understanding the 'bundled' nature of current practices and the conditions that enable and constrain these. Close attention to these findings is critical as schools seek to operationalise the National Child Safe Principles and refine ongoing safeguarding procedures. The findings have informed the development of an online survey that is currently testing, on a much larger scale, which elements of ethical practice are most positively associated with students' safety, wellbeing and recognition at school.

Education Minister Tehan's recent announcement to double the cost of an Arts Degree has been a bombshell like no other in recent higher education policy. Many have rightly seen it as a policy that makes no practical sense -- if teachers are wanted, as is claimed in the overall policy, a sizeable number of these trained in the humanities are of course needed. More concerning though, is the perception that the decision is just another dismal episode in Australia's never-ending culture wars, where national policy seems to be driven, as much as anything, by a desire to vanquish one's ideological foes -- real or imagined. In this article, Tim Moore asserts Australians should fervently decry this latest plan by the Government and its motivations. In this piece however, he argues that Australia's critical gaze should be directed as much at their universities -- or at least at that class of administrator that has come to run them in recent decades. In the directions and strategies that have been pursued over this time, there has been little defence by Australian 'institutional leaders' of the broader educational mission of universities, leaving them seriously exposed to the anti-academic, anti-democratic policies now being imposed. Moore describes two notions that have been key in the directions that have been pursued, and which lie at the heart of the intellectual enfeeblement of Australian institutions. The first of these, is the so-called employability agenda, which has come to construct higher education in almost exclusively instrumentalist terms; the other, is the highly flawed notion that skills in university study can be unproblematically prioritised over the learning of disciplinary knowledge.

There is a consensus nowadays that the best way to develop students' academic literacy abilities is within the context of their studies in the disciplines, an approach known as 'curriculum embedding'. But despite the demonstrable value of this approach, surveys of the field in Australia suggest there has been only limited success over the years in integrating embedding pedagogies into university courses. In the light of this halting progress, there is a need to constantly document initiatives in this area, both to affirm the principles upon which embedding is founded, as well as to show how these principles can be given practical effect on programs. This paper provides an account of one such initiative -- a collaborative project between Sociology academics and an academic literacy specialist. The key motif on the project was how the notions of 'theory' and 'critique' could be made comprehensible to students in the particular disciplinary context they were working in. We also show that an essential element of such programs is developing a common language by which pertinent issues can be explored, both among academics and with students.

Background: Traditional models of palliative care have been tested by the challenges of caring for increasing numbers of people at the end stages of a chronic non-malignant illness. The COVID-19 pandemic and consequent reliance on telehealth services, has enabled the development of creative models of care. Aims: To improve home-based palliative care for people with chronic illness using telehealth, and this was demonstrated using quality-of-life measures. Methods: A total of 35 non-cancer referrals to a community palliative care service were recommended for the pilot project, with one specialist palliative care nurse as their contact. All were offered a telehealth service with a specially designed app to self-monitor their symptoms, a session on advance care directives, and self-rated quality-of-life measures using the RAND 36-Item Health Survey (Version 1.0), consisting of 36 items that cover nine domains. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software. Findings: Over the 21 months of the pilot study, 13 people chose to participate in the pilot. For participants, telehealth meant more control over their symptoms, fewer emergency presentations and appointment travel time was alleviated. Quality-of-life surveys highlighted physical impairments, which did not change over time. Conclusion: This pilot programme demonstrated an innovative approach to addressing the demands of people dying of chronic illness, with further work required to explore the place of telehealth consultations in the overall healthcare system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is broad consensus that involving children in research is critically important for understanding their lives, there is considerable caution around their participation in social research on 'sensitive' issues. Such caution is further amplified by a lack of agreement about what constitutes a 'sensitive topic'. This article draws on data from interviews with a range of Australian stakeholders, including children, parents, researchers, ethics committee members, government and non-government organisation representatives, and other decision-makers, specifically related to the question of "what is a sensitive topic?" While participants identified a range of sensitive topics, findings point to sensitivities being closely linked with the contexts of children's lives and experiences. This requires researchers to approach research in ways that reflect more nuanced understandings of these sensitivities, help address potential concerns and facilitate the development of research relationships that promote ethical conduct of research with children.

Over the last decade, in both Australia and Britain, universities have been under increasing pressure to make themselves accountable for the extent to which they cultivate in their students transferable skills and "attributes" that will prepare them for the rapidly-changing world of employment. The Government's "Striving for Quality" document begins by pointing out that "Australia is actively positioning itself within an international "knowledge-based economy," which has placed new demands on higher education." The Government has questioned the effectiveness of higher education in this regard, in view of the Nielsen survey on employer satisfaction with graduates conducted in 2000. Here, employers reported that graduates often had weaknesses in the areas of "creativity and flair"; oral (and, to a lesser extent, written) communication; "interpersonal skills"; and "understanding of business practice." Much consideration has been given to the question of what role universities should play in the preparation for work; and, concomitantly, to ways of measuring the outcome of their efforts. This article looks at a testing instrument commissioned by the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) and developed by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). This "Graduate Skills Assessment" (GSA) Test is still at a pilot stage, but the Government has shown some interest in it as a method of quality assurance, and appears to be leaving it open as a policy option in the future. It is timely therefore to look closely at what this test promises and how it works. On its website, ACER has made available a sample set of questions representing the types of questions that might be asked in any iteration of the GSA. It has also posted an example of the assessment report that candidates receive, showing them their score, how it compares to "the distribution of the results for the middle 60% of students from fields of study similar to [theirs]," and what the scores at each level indicate about the candidate's skills in each category. In this article, the authors quote from the sample questions, and from the descriptions of what ACER says can be inferred about a candidate who scores at Level 3 (the highest level). The authors consider to what extent particular sample questions seem able to test what they purport to test, at the level at which they claim to test it. The authors comment only on the ones that are publicly available.

Recent developments in higher education have seen a strong emphasis placed on making graduates "job ready" for their work in the professions. A driver of this agenda has been the many mass-scale surveys conducted with business and industry about the abilities and general employability of graduates. This Australian-based study is focused on perceptions and attitudes around one such ability--professional writing skills. "Discourse-based interviews" were conducted with managers and supervisors from a range of professional areas. Their responses were most interesting, and served, among other things, to challenge some of the emerging ideas about "job readiness" in current debates about the directions of higher education.

This article describes the results from a national project that investigated institutional approaches to the development of student English language capabilities in Australian higher education. The project aimed to identify the various approaches and strategies that higher education providers have established and to gauge whether they have been evaluated by those in the field as successful in attaining their objectives. The results of the study indicated that those institutions identified as successful had a number of elements in common, elements missing from those universities which were considered as less effective. The article concludes by identifying the key factors that were identified by project participants as being essential in the development of successful institution-wide strategies for promoting student language growth.

Children who experience homelessness are at risk of poor health and well-being, and negative social outcomes. They are often exposed to stressful life events, such as domestic violence, parental mental health difficulties and family breakdown. Although many experience difficulties in remaining engaged in school, children report that schools can provide them with a sense of belonging and can help them and their families to link with supports to assist them through their homeless experience. This article reports on a study with children who had experienced homelessness with their families and discusses their thoughts on homelessness and school. It highlights some of their difficulties and worries, but identifies some opportunities for support. (Contains 1 figure.)

Children who accompany their parents or guardians during a period of homelessness make up 37% (more than one in three) of all people accessing the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP) services. This paper describes an Australian qualitative study that explored the experiences of children who accompanied their families during periods of homelessness. It focuses particularly on what children and young people say they want from the services that they come in contact with; particularly specialised homelessness services such as housing support services and refuges. Key themes that emerged from the research include: the need for services to engage with children as individuals in their own right, to listen to and acknowledge their stories, to have services that meet their individual needs, to act and respond when children feel unsafe and for workers who can provide support to children to talk to parents about what is going on. Children and young people wanted workers to know that they felt their parents were doing their best to keep them safe. They focused on what their parents could do and did do rather than what they were not able to provide. They called on the human service system to do the same.

Schools play an important part in the lives of children and young people who have caring responsibilities for a family member with an illness, disability, alcohol or other drug problem or mental health condition but many of these "young carers" report difficulty in attending, achieving and participating in education. This qualitative research project aimed to gather young carers' views about school, the challenges they face in engaging with education and their peers, and ways that the system might better support others like them. It found that significant caring responsibilities, a lack of appropriate and responsive support services to meet family needs and a lack of awareness and understanding within the education system significantly reduced young carers' capacity to fully engage with their learning. Young carers in the study called for more assistance in caring for their relatives, more flexibility and responsiveness to their home lives within the design and delivery of education, and better processes for identifying and responding to the challenges they encounter in participating in the life of the school community. (Contains 1 table.)

This article overviews prevention and early intervention approaches focusing specifically on their relevance to the health of children and young people in Australia. Australian public health has a sound track record although concealed within the aggregate profile are a number of sub-populations with poorer health indicators. Recognition of this has increased efforts to improve the health of children and young people especially in exploring the impact of social environments within the communities where children are raised. This paper examines emerging research in this area drawing out key lessons and learning from Australian experience in the field of early intervention and prevention in community settings.

A challenge for many EAP teachers working on pre-sessional programs is to find ways to reconcile the dual aims of preparing students for university study and for the IELTS test. The study described here seeks to provide some guidance on this issue through an analysis of the type of writing required in the two domains. We compared the standard IELTS Task 2 rubric with a corpus of 155 assignment tasks collected at two Australian universities and found that whilst IELTS writing bears some resemblance to the predominant genre of university study-the essay, there are also some very important difference. Our findings suggest that the type of writing the test elicits may have more in common with certain public nonacademic genres, and thus should not be thought of as an appropriate model for university writing. We conclude that it is probably best to deal with test preparation and the broader EAP writing curriculum within separate programs. (Contains 11 tables and 1 figure.)

Young carers support family members affected by disability or a health condition. The Young Carer Bursary Program aims to support young carers' education. This paper analysed data from consenting bursary applicants (2017–2019) to investigate relationships between wellbeing, educational attendance, home study and other factors. Descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analysis determined significant issues, relationships and influential factors related to young carer (N = 1,443) wellbeing and education. Sixty‐eight percent were aged between 13 and 18 years and attended secondary school. One third of the sample reported that they were the main carer in their family and 29% reported receiving no support. Female applicants from single parent households who were the main carer attended educational settings less often. Eighteen percent (n = 267) rated their wellbeing as poor/very poor. Better wellbeing was associated with increased educational attendance (rs = 0.33, p < 0.001) and home study (rs = 0.34, p < 0.001). Wellbeing was associated with main carer status, caring for a parent, having a disability, being older and having few supports. Educational attendance was associated with main carer status, higher care load and fewer supports. Home study was associated with having a disability, caring for a sibling, caring for more than 11 hr per week and having fewer supports. Important factors about the age, life situation and challenges experienced by young carers identified in this paper indicate that further research into preferred supports and effectiveness of the bursary in improving educational engagement is warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Child safety is now a national policy priority in Australia. Extensive enquiries and reviews have escalated legislative and policy responses focused on developing, maintaining and monitoring "child safe" organisations. The recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse point to the importance of cultural conditions within organisations in supporting child safety and the need for responsive change in some organisations. Drawing on a recent policy analysis, undertaken as part of a larger Australian Research Council Discovery Project, this article examines how children and safety are constructed, within and across relevant state and federal government policies in Australia, and the implications of this. Distinctions are drawn between conceptualisations of children within the broader education policy context and two specific policy contexts in which children are considered particularly vulnerable to abuse – out‐of‐home care and disability. The findings indicate that policy discourses of "child safe" potentially foster different emphases and approaches in organisations. These have implications for the way children are positioned in relation to their safety, how their rights are recognised and implemented, and what is required to foster cultural conditions within organisations to best support children's safety and wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (the Royal Commission) examined child sexual abuse within a wide range of institutions that provide services to children, this included residential facilities. The current study (funded by the Royal Commission) considers young people's perception of safety in residential care; specifically, the current study attended to the voices of young people who spoke about sexual harassment and assault in qualitative interviews. Interviews were conducted with young people aged between 13 and 21 years who were or had recently been in residential care. Participants were asked for their perceptions of situations in a series of vignettes describing various levels and types of sexual assault and harassment. During these interviews, the young people in this study voluntarily reported known incidences of sexual assault and harassment in varying levels, perpetrated by workers, individuals outside of residential care, and peers within residential care. Sexual assault and harassment was discussed in heteronormative and gendered ways with young men seen as perpetrators and protectors, and young women seen as being vulnerable. Further, it was evident from this study, that there were varying responses to these situations from workers within the residential care facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keeping children safe from harm is a national policy priority in Australia. Extensive inquiries and reviews have highlighted institutions' persistent failures to respond ethically and appropriately to child abuse and its life‐long impacts on survivors. Policy efforts now reflect considerable emphasis on safeguarding children, including through the development of 'child safe' organisations. The realisation of these policy aspirations requires close attention to how 'child safe' is conceptualised and operationalised in different organisational contexts. Drawing on an analysis of policy in Australia and other international jurisdictions, namely New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Ireland, this article engages critically with the notion of 'child safe' in policy, to explore who is to be safe, from what and how, in organisational settings. The findings suggest emergent discourses of 'child safe' are bound up with particular constructions of both children and safety, reflect current social and political understandings and agendas, and have implications for organisations' approaches to safety. Ensuring the safety of children in Australia and other jurisdictions requires continuing scrutiny of policy implementation to make sure current policy efforts are not reduced to compliance‐based imperatives that protect organisations, but fail to create the cultural conditions that enhance children's wellbeing and safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines client and service data from an early psychosis service in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, and presents a client and service profile, with a focus on the psychiatric, psychosocial, and physical health profile of young people with early psychosis. Implications for practice are discussed. Client and service data were captured through a range of processes and comprise a number of different datasets, specifically client demographical information and service data as routinely collected (N = 601), psychosocial data collected through a file audit (N = 33), and client physical health data maintained by the physical health nurse (N = 39). The service researcher extracted all data from each of the databases and analyzed the data descriptively for client and service profile information. The client profile data indicate early psychosis clients present with a range of psychiatric, psychosocial, and physical health vulnerabilities. The data presented support the need for mental health care to be provided in conjunction with primary health care, vocational and employment support, exercise and dietary interventions, and support with substance use. Furthermore, this article highlights the importance of family inclusive practice and trauma-informed care in early psychosis services. The findings support calls for services to be integrated and young people to be responded to holistically through the integration of psychological, psychosocial, and physical health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article presents findings from a study with 467 child protection practitioners in Australia to determine their practice responses and views on children's participation. The practitioners, recruited from 5 state jurisdictions, completed an online survey responding to case studies designed to determine the extent to which they would seek and include children's perspectives in decision making, and their confidence in talking to children. We report on practitioners' responses to a case study of a 5‐year‐old girl with suspicious bruising where the mother reports domestic violence. Based on previous research, it was hypothesized that the child's young age would lead to low levels of confidence in consulting with the child and giving weight to her perspective. In contrast to the findings of other research, our results show that almost all workers report that they would speak with the child, would be confident doing so, and would give weight to the child's perspective. Our discussion explores the potential reasons for the difference in these findings compared with other research, including the experience of practitioners, increased child‐centred policy in Australia, multiple understandings of participation, and variation in children and practitioner views of participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informed consent is critical in research with children. Although much has been written about the need to see consent as an ongoing process, less has considered how to do it in practice. This article reflects on the authors’ experiences of conducting a piece of research focusing on children’s experiences of safety from abuse within institutional contexts. It draws on feedback provided by participants and the guidance of three Children’s Reference Groups. The importance of presenting information in accessible and appropriate ways, of providing opportunities for participants to negotiate their participation and for in-the-moment challenges be dealt with collaboratively and reflexively are stressed. To illustrate our approach, we provide a number of consent tools and describe how they were utilised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has set in motion a number of systemic and organizational approaches to identify and respond to child sexual abuse. These include increased child abuse awareness, developing and enhancing child-safe organizational cultures and policies and more thorough screening and supervision of staff in child and youth serving organizations. Although these advances should be applauded, many of the concerns that children and young people have raised about interpersonal safety have not been fully addressed. There is therefore a risk that children’s physical, relational, generational, and organizational powerlessness are reinforced through child-safe practices that restrict their meaningful participation, ignore their agency and capacity and fail to respond to their felt safety needs or wishes. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative research project conducted with 121 Australian children and young people and presents their perspectives on issues of vulnerability and the ways that they would like adults and institutions to respond to their safety concerns. The value of adult-child alliances, of formal mechanisms that are child-friendly and accessible and having external agencies monitor and review institutional strategies to preventing harm are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people who live in residential care are at greater risk of experiencing sexual abuse and other forms of abuse than those living in other out of home care placements. To better understand how young people perceive and experience safety in residential care, and the things that they most need to be and feel safe, a qualitative study was conducted with 27 Australian children and young people for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. This paper describes young people's perspectives on what makes residential care safe: supportive relationships, stability and predictability, fair rules, and having some control over their environment. Young people said that safety could be improved with: better appreciation of the risks in residential care; better matching, staffing and oversight; and better-designed responses that involve young people themselves. The findings provide critical insights from young people themselves and argue that adults and institutions need to appreciate their views of safety so as to adequately respond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2012, the Australian Government announced the establishment of a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The aim of the Royal Commission is to understand how and why sexual abuse occurred within Australian institutions and to provide guidance as to how future abuse might be prevented. The Royal Commission commissioned a mixed methods study to explore what children need to be safe and to feel safe, to explore how they determine their level of safety, and their observations about how institutions act to prevent and respond to safety issues. This article reports on the findings from the first phase of the study that involved focus groups carried out with children aged 4-17 years from different types of institutions. The discussion focused particularly on how children conceptualise safety and how they make judgments about their levels of safety. Children and young people's conceptualisation of safety had multiple dimensions, which include the idea that being safe and feeling safe are two distinct, interrelated but sometimes non-concurrent experiences; that safety is identified and experienced as a set of feelings; trusting relationships are the foundation of safety; familiarity helps children feel safe; and safe environments are those that are ordered and orderly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developments in higher education have seen a strong emphasis placed on making graduates ‘job ready’ for their work in the professions. A driver of this agenda has been the many mass-scale surveys conducted with business and industry about the abilities and general employability of graduates. This Australian-based study is focused on perceptions and attitudes around one such ability – professional writing skills. ‘Discourse-based interviews' were conducted with managers and supervisors from a range of professional areas. Their responses were most interesting, and served, among other things, to challenge some of the emerging ideas about ‘job readiness’ in current debates about the directions of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

• Parenting aspirations of young people who have experienced adversity are overlooked. • Young people would like to be parents but had other goals to achieve first. • Goals included addressing enjoying their youth, addressing personal difficulties. • Aspirations were influence by childhood experiences and current circumstances. Only a limited number of studies have sought to examine the parenting attitudes and aspirations of young people who have experienced abuse, neglect, and childhood adversity and who are not yet pregnant or parenting. Given the dearth of literature on this topic, this study explores the attitudes and aspirations relating to pregnancy and parenthood among South Australian young people who have experienced abuse, neglect, or childhood adversity. A total of fifteen young people (8 male and 7 female) were recruited from a variety of services that may be serving young people with experiences of abuse, neglect, or early adversity. Young people took part in a semi-structured interview exploring their attitudes and aspirations regarding relationships, pregnancy, and parenthood. Young people discussed whether they would like to be parents, and some of the goals and aspirations that they would like to achieve beforehand. The reasons why young people wanted to be parents later in life and achieve these goals first were categories into three interrelated groups: they wanted to enjoy their youth and succeed in education or employment, they wanted to address their own personal difficulties and challenges first or they wanted to be prepared and be in the best position possible to meet the needs of their future children. While most of the sample were not planning on becoming parents before they turned 25, all aspired to have children at some point. Young people's aspirations towards younger parenthood were varied and often shaped by their childhood experiences and current circumstances. Implications for policy and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the results from a national project that investigated institutional approaches to the development of student English language capabilities in Australian higher education. The project aimed to identify the various approaches and strategies that higher education providers have established and to gauge whether they have been evaluated by those in the field as successful in attaining their objectives. The results of the study indicated that those institutions identified as successful had a number of elements in common, elements missing from those universities which were considered as less effective. The article concludes by identifying the key factors that were identified by project participants as being essential in the development of successful institution-wide strategies for promoting student language growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children who accompany their parents or guardians during a period of homelessness make up 37% (more than one in three) of all people accessing the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP) services. This paper describes an Australian qualitative study that explored the experiences of children who accompanied their families during periods of homelessness. It focuses particularly on what children and young people say they want from the services that they come in contact with; particularly specialised homelessness services such as housing support services and refuges. Key themes that emerged from the research include: the need for services to engage with children as individuals in their own right, to listen to and acknowledge their stories, to have services that meet their individual needs, to act and respond when children feel unsafe and for workers who can provide support to children to talk to parents about what is going on. Children and young people wanted workers to know that they felt their parents were doing their best to keep them safe. They focused on what their parents could do and did do rather than what they were not able to provide. They called on the human service system to do the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although children of parents with an alcohol or other drug (AOD) issue appear to assume a range of caring responsibilities within their families they have, until recently, been excluded from the growing body of young-carer research, policy and practice. This is problematic, as this group may experience greater levels of social exclusion whilst experiencing similar negative impacts of care as their caring peers. This paper discusses the findings of an exploratory qualitative research project conducted in Canberra, Australia which attempted to further understand these young people's experiences and to consider how they might best be supported. The paper challenges the way that young caring has been conceptualised and suggests that unless a number of conceptual, structural and organisational changes are made, young people caring for a parent with an AOD issue may remain relatively unsupported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools play an important part in the lives of children and young people who have caring responsibilities for a family member with an illness, disability, alcohol or other drug problem or mental health condition but many of these 'young carers' report difficulty in attending, achieving and participating in education. This qualitative research project aimed to gather young carers' views about school, the challenges they face in engaging with education and their peers, and ways that the system might better support others like them. It found that significant caring responsibilities, a lack of appropriate and responsive support services to meet family needs and a lack of awareness and understanding within the education system significantly reduced young carers' capacity to fully engage with their learning. Young carers in the study called for more assistance in caring for their relatives, more flexibility and responsiveness to their home lives within the design and delivery of education, and better processes for identifying and responding to the challenges they encounter in participating in the life of the school community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A significant consideration in defining patterns of ecological interest is determining at what spatial scales these patterns are apparent. We performed a mensurative experiment to determine the effect of how changing the extent of sampling, using a fixed grain (panning up), changed our measurements of seagrass epiphyte biomass at a variety of hierarchical spatial scales, ranging from approximately 0.1m to 2.5×105 m. The experiment was performed twice at two sets of nested locations, also capturing an element of seasonality within the spatial extents. While the two regions and their nested locations differed in terms of epiphyte biomass, and values did change over time, mean epiphyte values were invariant at the local scale. This indicates that at the local scale (≤100m extent), we expect seagrass epiphyte biomass to be relatively homogenous. Contrary to theoretical predictions, we did not detect predictable changes in mean values of epiphyte biomass as sampling extent increased. The results of this study highlight the importance of recognizing the spatial dependence of patterns in heterogeneous environments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article looks at a variety of barriers that restrict young carers' access to and satisfactory outcomes within mainstream education. According to estimates, there are 338,000 young carers under the age of 25 in Australia. Young carers, in reality, are not able to access education if their relative is not provided with appropriate care they are away. This lack of support has an impact on young people's school attendance. Poverty is a risk factor for early school leaving and also for achieving satisfactory outcomes in education.

Abstract: A challenge for many EAP teachers working on pre-sessional programs is to find ways to reconcile the dual aims of preparing students for university study and for the IELTS test. The study described here seeks to provide some guidance on this issue through an analysis of the type of writing required in the two domains. We compared the standard IELTS Task 2 rubric with a corpus of 155 assignment tasks collected at two Australian universities and found that whilst IELTS writing bears some resemblance to the predominant genre of university study-the essay, there are also some very important difference. Our findings suggest that the type of writing the test elicits may have more in common with certain public nonacademic genres, and thus should not be thought of as an appropriate model for university writing. We conclude that it is probably best to deal with test preparation and the broader EAP writing curriculum within separate programs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Maintenance of academic standards, assessment and monitoring are key tasks for tertiary education, as the system attempts to meet government targets for universal participation. Tertiary education therefore demands more attention to the measurement of outcomes. However, the use of a graduate skills assessment test, we contend--particularly in the form this currently takes in Australia--implies a limited sense of the value added by a university education. We question the validity of national testing both on grounds of its suitability to assess the skills cultivated by university study and on grounds of equity and cultural inclusiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]