ITAS Introduction

ITAS in a virtual environment – quality and efficacy in Indigenous tertiary student support

Susan Beetson, Annie Tyhuis, Susan Willsteed, Juliana McLaughlin, Sue Whatman

Introduction

ITAS at QUT

Centralised administration of the Aboriginal Tutorial Assistance Scheme (ATAS) at QUT began in 1990, after the former Brisbane College of Advanced Education (BCAE) merged with the Queensland Institute of Technology (QIT). Support for Indigenous students under the National policy had previously been offered through the School of Education at BCAE (White, 2007), but the new university provided the administrative platform for all Indigenous students in every faculty to receive ATAS support.

From 1990 to 1994, ATAS was centrally organised by the Queensland office of the Department of Education, Employment and Training (DEET) through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Distance Education Unit (ATSIDEU) at Mt Gravatt (Woodward, 2007). Academic support staff in the Oodgeroo Unit were the first point of contact for students in requesting tutorial assistance, but the administrative load was shared by QUT staff and the ATSIDEU staff who provided the appropriate forms, registered the potential tutors, approved the educational assessments and work programs, processes pay claims and made payments (Woodward, 2007).

As with other education providers around Australia, our university was concerned with the inevitable administrative delay between student requests for assistance, the processing of forms off campus, and the actual appointment and start date of tuition. Strict guidelines about commencement dates, weekly limits on tutoring and reporting paperwork often mean that students were not able to make use of tuition support until the mid-semester break. As reported earlier, the legislative change to make bulk funding available to education providers to take over the administration of ITAS was intended to reduce such administrative delays.

With the Bulk Funding Arrangements of 1995, education providers wishing to continue offering ATAS needed to enter into a contractual agreement with DEET to obtain funding on a yearly basis. Each contract and funding provided was based upon 50% of the equivalent fulltime student enrolment (Woodward, 2007).

The improvement in these rates of participation and success was directly linked to the amount of funding that education providers would be entitled to in future years. Funding was not specifically tied to ‘proving’ the quality of the program; that was implied by increasing numbers of graduates.  However, from our experience at QUT, there are numerous variables affecting the access, participation and graduation rates of students, including but not limited to:

1. perceptions of financial support available to potential students;
2. university cut-off scores;
3. university ‘inducements’ that differ from each institution;
4. reputation (especially amongst alumni);
5. history of family enrolment;
6. physical location of the institution (McLaughlin, 2006).

Policy changes in other student related areas such as eligibility criteria for Abstudy and Youth Allowance may also affect the number of Indigenous students applying for tertiary study or increase pressure on students who must supplement their income through part-time work.   These students may experience difficulty in managing academic workloads and family/employment commitments and thus impact directly on student completions (Oodgeroo Unit, 2003).

With the emphasis of statistical reporting however, there is no requirement or incentive for education providers to research the impact of such variables, nor the quality of teaching offered through programs such as ATAS. The issue of academic excellence was also overlooked by the focus on numbers of graduates.  The burden of ‘proof’ was limited, by national policy, to only reporting changes in student outcomes.

Significant changes to the administration of, and to a lesser extent, the reporting, of ATAS occurred in 1995 when the Bulk Funding Arrangements were introduced (Woodward, 2007).  The ATAS bulk-funding arrangements were established in 1995 with the familiar objective of assisting Indigenous Australians enrolled in tertiary institutions to achieve educational outcomes equal to those of other Australians through supplementary tutorial assistance. It was expected that the education providers through which students were enrolled were better placed to assess student learning needs, and appoint appropriately qualified tutors to meet those needs. The new bulk funding scheme enabled students to access individual or small group tutorial assistance, as with previous arrangements, with the main significant difference being that individual education providers were now totally responsible for all administration and payments to tutors (Woodward, 2007).

By 1999, the Australian Government indicated that there had been a necessary emphasis on access and participation, but an insufficient focus on achieving educational outcomes.  The federal government regarded the continuance of significant educational inequality between Indigenous and non‑Indigenous school students as unacceptable (Commonwealth of Australia, 2003, p. 9).  The Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Bill 2000 was introduced to replace the Indigenous Education (Supplementary Assistance) Act 1989 through which ATAS was already being provided. The new Act, while not repealing the previous one (The Senate, 2005) was introduced to determine and allocate funding for the Indigenous Education Strategic Initiative Program (IESIP) and thus, did not impact upon the existing administration of ATAS through the Appropriations Bill #1 (Indigenous Education Direct Assistance - IEDA) (DEST, 2002).  Not surprisingly, the reporting requirements for IESIP were very similar to ATAS;

1. number of students accessing IESIP by state and gender;
2. number of education providers delivering programs; and,
3. the total cost of such programs by state and provider (DEST, 2002).

These trends confirmed our earlier observation that education providers of ATAS (and IESIP) were not required to examine the quality of teaching and learning of their program in order to satisfy their auditing/reporting obligations.

Reporting against outcomes for Indigenous Education Direct Assistance (IEDA), through which ATAS is funded, had not changed from earlier requirements set out in the National policy in 1989. For example, in the National Report to Parliament on Indigenous Education and Training (DEST, 2002), ATAS results were still reported in terms of;

1. how many students accessed ATAS by state and gender; and,
2. the number of education providers involved in delivering ATAS (DEST, 2002, specifically Chapter 2).

The Oodgeroo Unit became responsible for the administration of the annual ATAS Bulk-Funding Grant to Queensland University of Technology. The Unit’s academic and general staff take responsibility for different aspects of the ATAS Funding Grant.   Academic staff were responsible educational assessments, approving applications for ATAS assistance on the basis of the educational needs assessment, interviewing and recommending tutors for appointment, allocating tutors to students, conducting cultural awareness sessions, approving work programs and reviewing progress and tuition assessment reports. General staff maintained the tutor and student databases, reviewed and revised standard forms, revised information kits for tutors, students and academic staff, confirmed tutorial arrangements in writing, checked and approved tutor claim forms and timesheets, monitored salary and non-salary expenditure, coordinated cultural awareness sessions, maintained student and tutor files, prepared the Funding Grant for external audit and various mid and end year financial and program reports.  

Five years after taking responsibility for ATAS, the Oodgeroo Unit acted upon internal concerns raised in a 2000 Review of the Unit that the program could not be adequately administered by a part-time coordinator, even though the funding guidelines did not provide for full-time administration. This cost was taken up by the Oodgeroo Unit.
The renamed Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme (ITAS) replaced ATAS in 2005, after the introduction of the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2004 (DEST, 2006).  The major differences in reporting requirements of the “new” ITAS program as articulated by DEST (2006) included;

1. university subject results of students receiving ITAS;
2. information about the effectiveness of different tutoring strategies (i.e. group versus individual tuition); and,
3. information about changes to student behaviour and attitudes (for example, the number of ‘no shows’ a student has).

Statistical data to satisfy the new requirements was already available with existing reporting mechanisms, specifically the student/result table, and student/tutor table. However, reasons behind any changes in behaviour were not able to be presented back to DEST in existing data reporting requirements, even though we captured such data through qualitative student evaluations of tutors, and tutor final progress reports. Furthermore, as stated earlier in our response to the 2003 Bulk Funding Arrangements review, the lack of feedback from DEST as to what they wanted the information for, and how it would return to improve the quality of ITAS remains unresolved.
In 2004, the Oodgeroo Unit made a significant change to ITAS access for students and tutors by making most of the administrative paperwork available online through the Oodgeroo Unit website. This was one response to the acknowledgement made in the 2003 review that part time, postgraduate and externally enrolled students did not have day time access to academic staff who would normally provide it, and this was having an impact on their uptake of ITAS support. Ah Sam (2007) noted that small, incremental changes such as this over the last seven years reflected the intention of the Oodgeroo Unit to offer a virtual environment for ITAS that we are progressing towards. 
ITAS at QUT is currently used by approx 20% of Indigenous students, which equates to 95 students out of 380 (see Table 1). QUT is performing well nationally and within Queensland for student enrolments (access) and participation. Whilst QUT’s overall performance in enrolling (recruiting) students decreased marginally between 2003 and 2004, participation (continuing students) increased, suggesting that student support mechanisms operating within the Oodgeroo Unit are effective (Oodgeroo Unit, 2005).

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students interviewed through the alternative entry program (CASP) are advised to apply for ITAS if offered a place to study at QUT (Oodgeroo Unit Staff Retreat minutes, 2001).  Emphasis is made during the pre-orientation week which the Unit conducts for first year Indigenous students prior to mainstream orientation schedules.  This is accompanied by an information session detailing how the program works at the university.  An invitation is sent to all students who have identified as Indigenous Australian (who did not attend pre-orientation) when classes commence. Often, many first year students complete the request for tuition forms within the first weeks of semester.

As explained earlier, the process begins with students’ application, prior to academic staff undertaking educational assessment, recruiting tutors through internal databases or seeking recommendations from unit / course coordinators, interviewing and recommending appointments, approving work programs, and reviewing progress and tuition assessment reports (see diagram of current work flow).  Tutors are strictly guided by a Tutor’s Manual,   specifically outlining their roles and responsibilities, timing requirement, and conditions for working as an ITAS tutor.  Our annual reports submitted to DEST reveal the success rates within the ITAS program at our university, in terms of successful completion of units and graduate students (Oodgeroo Unit DEST Report, 2006).   External audits by DEST are conducted as required. 
Table 1
2007 students accessing ITAS tutoring within the Oodgeroo Unit, QUT

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