5.1.2 Access to education “The majority of people in my family—in my community— never had the opportunity to go to school. Because that’s how persecution works. First they take your right to education, your right to employment, your citizenship, your birth certificate. They strip away all your documents. After that, slowly, slowly, you lose awareness of what your rights are. Even if you think what’s happened to you is unfair, you don’t actually understand the extent of all those terrible things that are being done to you until you come to a place where you see everyone’s getting access to all these things and you start to understand. You start to understand that these are the rights you should have had all along.” — Asma In many of the family groups we spoke to, parents reported receiving only limited (or in some cases, no) formal education in their country of origin, only to now witness their children unable to access higher education in Australia. Stateless young people without visas and on temporary visas can only access higher education by applying as ‘international students.’ A lack of documentation and extremely high tuition fees (noting parents in most cases have been prohibited from working for many years) make this impossible. Young people in this situation are instead able to apply for a small number of scholarships offered at the discretion of individual universities. “I had access to education in primary school and high school. That’s it. For me, a lot of my problems when it comes to education started in year 12. All my friends were worried the HSC and their ATAR score. For me, I wasn’t just worried about my marks. I was worried about the fact that I was on a temporary visa. For around 12 years, I was on a temporary visa, me and my family. I didn’t have access to HECS loans or any support. The only way I could go to university was with a full scholarship, which is very, very hard to get. Having high grades is not enough. You have to prove that you’re worth this thing.” — Asma The unfairness of young stateless people being unable to access higher education due to their immigration status, despite having spent years in Australia, was observed by policy and advocacy experts interviewed for this research. “Australia, I think, understands its obligations to people who are under the age of 18. If you’re under the age of 18 and you’re a transitory person, you can go to primary school and high school… but the day they turn 18, they will be told by the Department, ‘No, you are not allowed to study anymore.’ It’s so strict, that even people who want to get a forklift license or something like that, couldn’t do that sort of TAFE study for vocational training. So we have tried, on many occasions in the last 12 months or so, to say, ‘What is the point of this, when somebody has clearly done well in high school, they’ve got the marks, they’ve got a place, they’ve got a scholarship, they’ve got funding, why would you not let a young person access higher education?’ Sadly, we haven’t been able to shift the government on this policy. They’ve said, ‘If they want to study, then they should sign up to go to New Zealand.’ — Refugee Policy Advisor, Community Sector Understanding Statelessness in Australia | Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness 55