immigrant parents want more support to help their children go to uni

One of the Albanese government’s top priorities in education is to see more Australians graduating from university.

It has set a target of 80% of the workforce having a university degree or TAFE qualification by 2050, up from 60% today.

A key part of this will be raising participation rates for people from underrepresented backgrounds. Australians from low socioeconomic backgrounds make up 25% of the population, but only represent 17% undergraduate enrolments in higher education.

Immigrant families often face socioeconomic disadvantages that can effect their children’s opportunities in education. As well as lower incomes, they can have fewer resources and supports.

In our project, we looked at Punchbowl Boys’ High School in Sydney’s western suburbs, where 98% of students come from a non-English speaking background.

We interviewed parents to better understand the challenges they face and how to help them. This is because research tells us families are an important source of motivation and support for young people making post-school plans.

Our research

We interviewed parents from 23 families with immigrant backgrounds. They all had students in years 9 to 12. Most of the parents supported the idea of their children going on to further study. As one parent told us:

I push education for my kids because I want them to get somewhere.

But they also reported many obstacles when supporting their children to go to university.

‘If they could explain’

More than 50% of Australians were either born overseas or have a parent born overseas.

This means they may not have first-hand knowledge or experience of the final years of school, or the options for study and training post-school.

Some parents in our study said they were not familiar with how the higher education system works. They were also unsure about alternative pathways to enrol in university. Many parents told us they would like more specific guidance on the application process.

If they [teachers at the school] could explain how our children are going to finish school, and when we can expect they’re going to receive these emails then they would know when to accept or decline.

Others wanted more guidance on student loans, possible challenges and the “avenues [students] can go down”.

The language barrier

Language was also a “big barrier” mentioned by parents. This made it hard for parents to engage with the school and ask for help. One told us:

when I go to schools, and I want to talk to the schools, I don’t have the strong language ability to confront the school with whatever is concerning me.

Another parent talked about the difficulty of going to parent–teacher interviews:

I went to the parents’ meeting with the teacher, each teacher, one by one, and just reading his mark, not asking or not suggesting a way to improve himself. Okay, I didn’t ask them to be honest, but I felt, like, lost. Like, what should I do?

‘Strugging a lot’

Parents talked about how they often lacked help and security in their lives as they were trying to support their children:

We’re renting, we’re moving, moving too much in one year, we lived in three houses, and that was painful.

They also talked about a lack of family support:

we don’t have a lot of family around here.

Financial challenges also meant there were limited resources to help pave the way to university. They talked about not being able to afford “more tutoring” or other families they knew having to cut back on tutoring.

Some families relied on the children working after school instead of studying, noting if they were “struggling a lot,” then they “need that child to work”.

There was also an overwhelming concern about the eventual cost of a university education. Some interviewees said their child going would depend on getting a scholarship, while others worried about the eventual HELP debt:

we see university as something like that’s going to become a debt for a child later on.

‘A cultural gap’

Parents reported on how cultural differences could make it difficult to engage with their children over education and their aspirations in life. As one parent said:

It’s bit of cultural gap, I think, because the culture of this country and concern in our country is different […] the children, they feel that they are free to do whatever they like, whatever they want, and that the parents cannot stop them.

Parents also raised generational differences – they felt young people lack aspiration and are distracted by technology. As one parent said:

they’re simply controlled by it, and they’re just consumed by it, and they lose interest in other parts of life.

What can we do differently?

Previous research suggests students from migrant families can give up on further study if they don’t have support from their families. This support relies on their families understanding the complexities of the school and university systems – and all the options available to young people.

Our study suggests schools, universities and governments can do several things differently to encourage more students from migrant backgrounds to study at university. These include:

• education programs for parents: these could teach immigrant parents about Year 12 exams, ATARs, university pathways and the long-term benefits of higher education. This could be done through information sessions at school or online resources distributed by the school.

• more school-university partnerships: collaborations between schools and universities can provide early exposure and support, through campus visits and mentoring programs. This can help demystify higher education for students and their families.

• language support: enhancing language support programs already offered by education department trained staff – and making sure they start from the early years of school – is crucial to better involve parents in their children’s schooling.

• financial support: to ease financial pressures on migrant families, universities could expand their equity scholarships to specifically target students from these communities. Financial literacy programs could help families understand and access existing supports, provide guidance on government assistance and long-term financial planning for education.