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In this article, we map the extent of educational inequality within Tasmania, and between Tasmania and the rest of Australia, using "National Assessment Program--Literacy and Numeracy" (NAPLAN) and senior secondary attainment data. This analysis yields some surprising findings, showing the success of Tasmanian primary and high schools and that Tasmanian educational inequality is most strongly expressed at the senior secondary level. We conclude that using such publicly available data to identify differential achievement within and between jurisdictions would strengthen public policy and practitioner interventions aimed at achieving more equal educational outcomes for students in all schools. Our findings also have implications for research directions in this field, suggesting that by analysis of NAPLAN and "My School" data across individual schools and jurisdictions academic researchers could assist practitioners gain a deeper understanding of inequalities reproduced by the systems they are working within, while finding examples of schools and systems which show a greater level of success in ameliorating disadvantage.

Part-time engagement is a significant feature of senior secondary study for large numbers of students, in a context which includes high level policy pressures to achieve better outcomes for many more and a wider proportion of the schooling population, and significant policy and practice shifts at school, system and accreditation authority levels. Yet little is currently known about which students choose this option, and why, or the policy, schooling practice, system or theoretical implications of this change in senior secondary engagement patterns. The paper argues that research is required to fill this gap by identifying the intersections between part-time study and retention, engagement and completion, within broader theoretical, contextual and educational frameworks around post-compulsory study, and youth transitions more generally. It highlights definitional and statistical complexities which confuse understandings and distort analyses of changing patterns of senior secondary engagement, and the disjuncture between these definitions and the lived realities of students and their schools. Rather than trying to capture this shifting and fluid educational engagement through definitional gymnastics and statistical manipulation, the paper concludes by suggesting the concept of extended completion as a more useful descriptive and analytical tool. And it introduces a research project designed to fill the research and policy gap explored below, and to enhance retention and completion policy and practice. (Contains 3 tables, 1 figure, and 1 note.)

Educational theorists, practitioners and policy experts are giving increasing attention to the significance of lifewide as well as life-long learning. Yet few if any studies have been conducted into the opportunities for encouraging lifewide learning arising from part-time study at the senior secondary level. Similarly very little is known about the causes and educational outcomes of this trend, nor its relationship with school engagement, retention and completion, on the one hand, and early school-leaving and attrition on the other. This paper will report on recent research which mapped the location (both socio-economic and geographic) and other demographic dimensions of part-time senior secondary students in every secondary school in the public system in the state of South Australia. In doing so it will ask questions about the implications of part-time senior secondary study for educational policy frameworks, educational design and delivery mechanisms, the structure and cultures of schooling, accreditation frameworks and the achievement of educational equity. This state-wide research will be elaborated by two specific case studies; one concerning a highly successful university access pilot for adult students returning to study from extremely disadvantaged circumstances, and the other which targeted early school-leaver teenage mothers who returned to schooling by means of an innovative program which formalised and accredited their learning from pregnancy, birth and young motherhood. Both are presented as models of good practice in part-time study, inviting further research in terms of permeable boundaries between life and schooling and between different levels of educational provision and accreditation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]