To do the very best for students : a history of the New Start Programme at the University of Auckland

Abstract

This study is about the development of a programme which improves adults' access to and their learning experience within university. Based on the New Start programme run by the Centre for Continuing Education at, the University of Auckland, the study documents and analyses the development of this access programme from its inception in 1976 until 1989. New Zealand social policy as it relates to the ability of adults to undertake a university education, factors which affect adults' access to higher education are examined. The central questions addressed are, the need for a programme which facilitates adults entry into tertiary education and the benefits of such a programme. Research data obtained by traditional historical methods have been supplemented by evidence collected by feminist oral history techniques. Analysis was carried out within a framework of critical and feminist research methodologies. In the 1980s New Zealand's earlier attempts to resist higher education being defined only as the completion of a young person's formal schooling were overtaken. Educational policy, which strengthened the connection between education and economic growth, proposed that a government funded expansion of the education system should double the number of school leavers who proceeded on to higher education. The development of the New Start programme was grounded in a recognition of the developmental ability of adults, an awareness that formal access to higher education did not ensure access for all adults and the knowledge that participation in a preparatory programme enabled adults to be more successful in their quest to fulfill learning and personal aspirations. This study which as well as being about a programme which bridges the access to higher education for adults, also bridges the conventional divide between adult education and higher education.