CEFA news
A unique new partnership to assist more rural youth
Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) becomes CEFA'S first TAFE partner. In a unique and innovative new partnership, the Country Education Foundation of Australia and Canberra Institute of Technology have forged a partnership to ensure more youth from rural and regional areas can afford to access further education.
Distance and years of drought have seen student numbers from rural and regional areas participating in tertiary education greatly challenged. So concerned by this was Colin Adrian, Chief Executive of Canberra Institute of Technology that he decided to forge a partnership with the Country Education Foundation of Australia, a national not for profit organisation that assists rural communities to establish local education foundations.
Colin says that ‘although CEFA had a number of University partners supporting them, TAFE hadn’t yet come on board’. ‘With a substantial number of youth who leave high school going on to TAFE, we felt it was essential that students from rural and regional areas who need to move away to access a TAFE college also got some extra help to bridge the financial gap’.
‘The Country Education Foundation has established several partnerships with a dozen universities to date and most provide between $15,000 to $30,000 a year for matching the locally given grants that our young recipients have received from one of our local education foundation members. These partnerships can make a grant of $1,500 become $3,000 say Ms Jocellin Jansson, Executive Director of CEFA’.
‘CIT’s commitment to assisting more rural youth into further education is outstanding’. Alan was so keen for this partnership to happen, as were his team’. ‘The students we assist would most likely not have been able to go on to tertiary studies without this support say Ms Jansson.
Of great concern to the Country Education Foundation is the alarming increase in the number of rural students deferring after year 12 to work for 12 to 18 months in order to qualify for youth allowance. This trend is made all the worse because of the drought’ says Ms Jansson. ‘One of the real problems Mr Adrian says is that when students need to take a year or so off to work and save, a good number don’t go on to do what they originally wanted to, it’s too easy to loose focus. The financial assistance that will flow from our relationship with the Country Education Foundation will go some way to making an immediate transition from high school possible for country students’ ‘One third of our grant recipients go to TAFE’ said Ms Jansson, ‘and this partnership means for many more young people from our local education foundation communities, studying at CIT has now become possible’.
‘CIT had made it clear how committed they are to improving access to further education for students from rural and regional areas’ added Ms Jansson. The Country Education Foundation has a rapidly increasing number of local education foundations across rural Australia where a community committee raises funds to provide grants to local youth. ‘These grants greatly assist with the transition after high school, which for many young people means leaving their local community and relocating quite some distance away’ said Ms Jansson.
