A program designed to encourage high school students from long-disadvantaged backgrounds to consider taking a university degree has logged large year-on-year growth. Teenagers from First Nations, first-in-family and low socio-economic families have been historically less likely to seek a professional credential at university. The Australian Catholic University’s Step Up Into Teaching program fosters their participation by enabling senior high school students to complete two first-year university education degree units during the school holidays.
These students get full university credit for the units and conditional early entry into an ACU teaching degree, while also experiencing a taste of university life – often regarded as daunting and too difficult.
After this sample of university study, the students return to high school and spread the word to their fellow students in senior years. “It’s planted in their minds that the opportunity to complete the Step Up program will come to them one day,” says program leader Jamie Sherson. “Students can see themselves being able to go back into school as a teacher.”
In 2025, the SUIT program saw a record 126 students take part, an increase of 50 per cent from the previous year. In the previous cohort, 87 per cent of the participating students then moved directly into teaching degrees, ensuring professional teachers from the three marginalised groups return to schools as role models: to teach and inspire students to follow them to university.
Free for participating students, the SUIT scheme is a partnership between Catholic dioceses, schools and both state and Catholic education systems, says program leader Sherson. National expansion of the program is now on the drawing board.
The program fosters enables senior high school students to complete two first-year university education degree units during the school holidays.
“There’s a huge potential pool of students out there,” he says, adding that the university is forging close relationships with schools in Sydney and Brisbane, and it is hoped the program can grow in Canberra as well. “The ACU education degrees can equip students for teaching in either primary or high schools. Students within the SUIT suite can complete an early childhood and primary degree, which gives them the ability to teach across the entire early years platform.”
Before the program begins, SUIT students and their parents are invited to an information night on campus, to introduce them to the university. After the program there is a completion ceremony, and students are given official transcripts with the results of the two units, sociology and educational psychology, both compulsory in the first year of an education degree.
“It’s an incredibly proud moment,” Sherson says. “Many of these parents and caregivers would have never been on a university campus.”
The 2025-26 SUIT high school students will finish the program early in 2026 and comprise a further increase of 166 students, Sherson says, which is expected to go some way toward addressing the profound national shortage of teachers from these backgrounds.
The students take the two university units before they begin year 12, to avoid any interference with their final matriculation year, Sherson explains. Each unit is studied within a five-day intensive session on campus, with some of the assessment tasks completed a little later.
“They get the full experience of sitting in lecture halls, sitting in tutorial rooms, and having breaks together,” he says, “enjoying the days at the university and experiencing university life.”