A shared learning experience

When the school-bell rings at the end of the day and students across the state scramble to get out the gate, they could well be in a hurry to get to a homework club session led by one of Embrace Education’s many volunteers.

Established by a group of students from Monash University in 2006 to deliver tutoring services to a range of schools and community groups in the south-east, Embrace now also has a home at the University of Melbourne. The chance to contribute to an initiative providing free educational services to disadvantaged high school participants is something that has really resonated with Melbourne students since the opportunity opened up nearly two years ago. 

President of the University of Melbourne Embrace Education and third-year biomedicine student Tasmyn Soller says the group’s model of engagement enables significant opportunities for impact for both volunteers and the students they tutor.

“Being a university-based organisation we have access to many students keen to get involved and volunteer in the local community. This makes it quite easy for us to recruit tutors and have a valuable and wide-reaching impact on the learning and development of disadvantaged, recent migrant and refugee students,” she says.

“Embrace Education delivers three programs – homework clubs, an individual tutoring program, and an in-school program – and while most of these programs target students in the secondary years of schooling, we’ve recently started working with a number of primary schools and provide one-on-one tutoring support to first-year university and secondary school students.

“The idea is to work in collaboration with local community organisations in order to get university students volunteering in our community.”

Embrace is currently providing tutor support to a range of homework clubs and in-school tutoring programs in Collingwood, Reservoir, Ascot Vale, West Footscray and Carlton. Each program is delivered with the support and expertise of a relevant local community organisation, so seeking out those connections is a key part of the organisation’s operational model.

To help create these links, Embrace has been working with the Centre for Multicultural Youth (CMY), a Victorian not-for-profit organisation supporting young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds. CMY supports homework program providers across the state to click together those jigsaw pieces of community need and available resources. They also deliver free tutor training to Embrace’s volunteer teams. 

Tim Watson, Co-ordinator of Education Support at CMY, estimates that during any given week of the school year, upwards of 6000 students are attending more than 250 homework clubs across Victoria. They are supported by more than 1800 volunteer tutors. It’s an approach which he says is having impact.

“We have students in our schools who may be newly arrived to Australia, they may be learning English as an additional language and they will often have other needs – their families might need assistance understanding the Australian education system, particularly the expectation that students are required to take learning tasks home, which often require support to complete,” he says.

“Many students arriving in Australia as refugees, especially those coming into secondary schools, can have a quite disrupted education and need a lot of support.

“On most days, when the bell rings and students leave for the day, they are taking home some kind of task related to the curriculum. A prep student might need to practise their reading, or a VCE student has an assignment to complete. We can’t assume that every child or young person has a home where parents are able to help with homework, or even where parents understand English.

“Some students don’t have access to a space that’s conducive to quiet study. They might have siblings to look after, or no room to study. Access to a computer at home might not exist. Programs like Embrace are providing that valuable learning support and helping to address this gap.”

Already the relationship with CMY has seen Embrace link up with programs in West Footscray, Ascot Vale and Braybrook. 

Plans are under way to establish another primary school club in Footscray in partnership with the Tomorrow Foundation, and an in-school tutoring program at University High.

Embrace Education will be working with a number of new schools and community groups over coming months, and welcomes volunteer applications from university students and any members of the community who would like to be involved.

f www.facebook.com/UnimelbEmbraceEducation

www.embrace-education.org/volunteer/applications

www.cmy.net.au

www.ds.org.au