Education

Educational Equality, Equity, and Sui Generis Rights in Australian Higher EducationTheorising the Tensions and Contradictions

THE KEY IDEALS

EDUCATIONAL EQUALITY This concept aligns with the

Aristotelian Equality Principle (the same for all).

The straightforward idea contained in arguments for educational equality has been well-expressed by Brighouse (1995, p. 145) as,

‘…the same educational opportunities must be available to equally talented individuals with the same willingness to make an effort to acquire the necessary skills and qualifications’.

EDUCATIONAL EQUITY This concept aligns with the Aristotelian

Fairness Principle (different but appropriate) according to disadvantage/need…compensatory to achieve education outcomes.

The Gonski report (DEEWR, 2011, p.105) suggests that equity in education means:

…ensuring that differences in educational outcomes are not the result of differences in wealth, income, power or possessions. Equity in this sense does not mean that all students are the same or will achieve the same outcomes.

SUI GENERIS RIGHTS Sui generis rights is a Latin

phrase meaning ‘of its own genus’. It is used by international legal mechanisms to identify the rights of Indigenous Peoples living within nations but whose pre-existent rights have not been extinguished by colonisation and subsequent overlays of imposed legal structures; as being ‘of itself’, that is unique and cannot be included in a wider category.

Adopted by General Assembly Resolution 61/295 on 13 September 2007  http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/en/drip.html 

UN DRIPs Article 131. Indigenous peoples have the right to

revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons.

2. States shall take effective measures to ensure that this right is protected and also to ensure that Indigenous peoples can understand and be understood in political, legal and administrative proceedings, where necessary through the provision of interpretation or by other appropriate means.

UN DRIPs Article 141. Indigenous peoples have the right to

establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning.

2. Indigenous individuals, particularly children, have the right to all levels and forms of education of the State without discrimination.3. States shall, in conjunction with Indigenous

peoples, take effective measures, in order for Indigenous individuals, particularly children, including those living outside their communities, to have access, when possible, to an education in their own culture and provided in their own language.

Conflicts of Meaning

Conflicts of Aggregation: From Individualized Equity…

To Sub-Group Quasi Equality?

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• Access (proportion of Indigenous students among commencing domestic students)

• Retention (the proportion of Indigenous students who re-enroll at an institution in a given year compared with the students who were enrolled in the previous year, less those students who have completed their course).

• Success (the mean student progress rate for the previous year for Indigenous students, this being the proportion of units passed within a year to the total units enrolled).

• Completions (the proportion of Indigenous students completing all the academic requirements of a course).

Conflicts of Implementation: From Performance Measures…

To a New Vision…Universities need to look beyond the current popular deficit approach when considering how to increase

participation and outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

Instead, I challenge the sector to look within itself and reflect on systemic and institutional factors that may serve to exclude Aboriginal and Torres Strait

Islander students from undertaking higher education and, once in the system, continue their studies to

pursue higher degrees by research.

Associate Professor Sue Green, IHEAC, Increasing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students’ participation in higher education, 4th Annual Higher Education Congress, 8 March 2011.

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Cultural Rights: Both Ways Equality?

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