Not everybody wants to be on Broadway!: Strategies for increasing engagement in alternative pathway programs

The University of Western Australia (UWA) has initiated a range of initiatives in response to a focus on widening participation in tertiary education in Australia post-Bradley (Bradley, Noonan, Nugent & Scales, 2008). One such initiative is the Broadway UWA alternative entry pathway, established as a way of increasing the participation of students from low-SES secondary schools, which had its first cohort in 2012. Students entering through the Broadway UWA Scheme must have attended a Broadway UWA school, completed the requirements for the WA Certificate of Education, achieved UWA’s English Language Competence and have achieved an Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) of 75-79.99. Students who have chosen UWA as their first preference and who have met these criteria are automatically offered a place at UWA, although standard admission is with an ATAR of 80 or above. The students are provided with a range of support services to aid their transition to the tertiary setting, including interviews and email support. Over the course of the first 18 months of the program, one clear challenge has been encouraging the engagement of students in a program that they don’t apply for and therefore may not identify with. In this session we would like to pose the question “What strategies can we apply to increase the engagement of students with a pathway program that they are part of but have not applied for, to support their transition to tertiary study more effectively?”