Failure to close education gap for African Australians

Students with an African background need more support to succeed at university, study finds

Young people from African backgrounds find it difficult to take full advantage of Australia’s educational opportunities as they face a range of disadvantages not fully addressed by equality programmes, research has found.

In a paper published in the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies this month, Tebeje Molla, a researcher at Deakin University’s School of Education, found that young African Australians needed more help with using resources available to them. “Refugee youth with financial hardship, limited social networks, and meagre academic resources at home are less likely to benefit fully from educational opportunities made available through equity policies and programmes,” he said in the article.