opportunity to have their papers peer-reviewed, and these 14 refereed papers have been compiled in a single volume. The papers span a broad range of topics, including: Indigenous students and their intentions; educational pathways; skills recognition; leadership in VET providers; workplace mentoring; and the experiences of apprentices. This report is available at <>. Socioeconomic disadvantage and participation in tertiary education: preliminary thoughts Tom Karmel and Patrick Lim, NCVER This paper was written in early 2010 to encourage policy-makers to think about how to measure socioeconomic status. It also provides some data on socioeconomic status and tertiary education participation. Finally, it speculates about the likely impact of an expansion in higher education on those from a low socioeconomic background. Key messages Measurement of SES is a complex issue. While the concept relates to the characteristics of individuals and their families, for practical reasons measures based on the ABS Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) are usually adopted. SEIFA measures are very poor in classifying individuals by socioeconomic status. Nevertheless, the SEIFA measures perform quite well in measuring the aggregate relationship between SES and educational participation. An implication of SEIFA’s poor classification ability is that any policy that targets funding on the basis of SEIFA will result in the funds being badly misdirected. Some simple tabular analyses indicate that VET does a good job for low-SES individuals, and is not overly biased toward lower-level qualifications in this group. The group most likely to be affected by an expansion in the higher education sector will be those not currently undertaking post-school study rather than those currently undertaking vocational education and training. This paper also notes that SEIFA would be a very poor measure to implement any expansion in higher education aimed at low-SES individuals. This paper is available at <>. Single-sex schools and science engagement Joanna Sikora, Australian National University This paper considers whether single-sex schooling affects gendered patterns in the uptake of science courses in Year 11 and the development of science-related career paths. In particular, the author is interested in exploring gender differences relating to the take-up of the life and physical sciences. To investigate these issues, the author analyses data from the 2009 cohort of LSAY. Key messages Across all schools, male and female students systematically select different science subjects and prefer careers in different fields of science, as did their counterparts ten years ago.
opportunity to have their papers peer-reviewed, and these 14 refereed papers have been compiled in a single volume. The papers span a broad range of topics, including: Indigenous students and their intentions; educational pathways; skills recognition; leadership in VET providers; workplace mentoring; and the experiences of apprentices. This report is available at <>. Socioeconomic disadvantage and participation in tertiary education: preliminary thoughts Tom Karmel and Patrick Lim, NCVER This paper was written in early 2010 to encourage policy-makers to think about how to measure socioeconomic status. It also provides some data on socioeconomic status and tertiary education participation. Finally, it speculates about the likely impact of an expansion in higher education on those from a low socioeconomic background. Key messages Measurement of SES is a complex issue. While the concept relates to the characteristics of individuals and their families, for practical reasons measures based on the ABS Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) are usually adopted. SEIFA measures are very poor in classifying individuals by socioeconomic status. Nevertheless, the SEIFA measures perform quite well in measuring the aggregate relationship between SES and educational participation. An implication of SEIFA’s poor classification ability is that any policy that targets funding on the basis of SEIFA will result in the funds being badly misdirected. Some simple tabular analyses indicate that VET does a good job for low-SES individuals, and is not overly biased toward lower-level qualifications in this group. The group most likely to be affected by an expansion in the higher education sector will be those not currently undertaking post-school study rather than those currently undertaking vocational education and training. This paper also notes that SEIFA would be a very poor measure to implement any expansion in higher education aimed at low-SES individuals. This paper is available at <>. Single-sex schools and science engagement Joanna Sikora, Australian National University This paper considers whether single-sex schooling affects gendered patterns in the uptake of science courses in Year 11 and the development of science-related career paths. In particular, the author is interested in exploring gender differences relating to the take-up of the life and physical sciences. To investigate these issues, the author analyses data from the 2009 cohort of LSAY. Key messages Across all schools, male and female students systematically select different science subjects and prefer careers in different fields of science, as did their counterparts ten years ago.