Matching for Success

The Matching for Success working group, which includes the Australian Learning Lecture, Melbourne Assessment, The University of Melbourne, RMIT, Deakin University and Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre, has made a submission to the Australian Universities’ Accord Interim Report. It outlines how the use of learner profiles could greatly support the government’s aspiration in achieving increased and wider participation in tertiary education as outlined in the interim Accord report.

The authors of this submission are each working on a range of initiatives addressing various issues associated with the tertiary-secondary interface. They have come together recently as a group of assessment researchers, change-makers, universities, and tertiary admissions centres to explore how to develop different, more equitable and effective approaches to tertiary selection. The joint work has been provisionally titled the “Matching for Success” project.

The joint work arises from the emergence in Australia of a new approach to recognition and credentialing of learning at senior secondary level. Learner profiles based on robust assessment of a range of general learning competencies are currently being produced by many schools and some systems.

A key premise underpinning the project is that selection and recruitment practices based on learner profiles might be used at scale to enrich the information base used by learners to inform their applications, and also by tertiary institutions in recruitment and selection processes. It is likely that a more holistic, robust and comparable information base that describes a wider range of student aptitudes and interests through learner profiles can improve selection processes, for both learners and their advisers, and tertiary institutions.

Matching for Success Working Group submission