EAS Categories:

• English Language Difficulty
• School Environment (limited access to schooling as a refugee or asylum seeker)

Supporting Documents:

• English Language Difficulty Coversheet including personal statement
• School Statement for English Language Difficulty
• School Environment coversheet including personal statement
• School Statement for School Environment 

Background

Berhan was born in Eritrea in East Africa. He grew up speaking three languages: Tigrinya, Arabic, and a little English – never realising how important the third of these would become in his life.

When he was twelve, his parents encouraged him to flee the country with his older brother Jemal who, like many young Eritrean men, was facing indefinite military conscription. In neighbouring Sudan, the brothers lived in a refugee camp for four years – with limited access to formal schooling – until the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees approved their application for asylum.

At 16 and 20, Berhan and Jemal were accepted for resettlement in Australia. They chose Brisbane because their aunt’s family had settled there a few years earlier and had set up a successful Eritrean restaurant. Berhan immediately enrolled in an intensive English course at a specialist local high school.

Six months later, he began year eleven at a mainstream Australian high school. While his brother studied English at TAFE and drove taxis by night, Berhan took five subjects in English, determined to qualify for university admission. He pinned a photograph of his mother and father over the desk where he studied long into the evenings. A teacher and civil servant, they had always held high hopes for their academically gifted younger son.

But Berhan found study in English challenging. His Australian teachers mumbled and used strange slang, making spoken information difficult for him to follow. Even simple questions were hard for him to formulate. And exams were stressful because written text took him far longer to process than it did for Australian students.

Berhan’s teachers were amazed by his effort and the progress of his English across years eleven and twelve. They told him he should be proud just to have gained an ATAR. But they didn’t know what he could have achieved if he hadn’t missed so much schooling, or if he’d been studying in his own language. Once he got to university, he’d show them what he could really do.

Application

Berhan was interested in international and human rights law. With the help of his school guidance officer, he applied for a Bachelor of Laws/Bachelor of Arts at four different south east Queensland universities, listing his preferences in order from the most to the least competitive.

In the English Language Difficulty category, Berhan supplied a completed coversheet that included the exact date he arrived in Australia. His personal statement described the impact of his limited prior exposure to English on his senior studies. Berhan’s English teacher completed a school statement saying she believed language difficulties had prevented him from achieving results that reflected his true academic ability.

In the School Environment category, Berhan wrote a separate personal statement. Here, he estimated that he had missed about four years of schooling while living in the refugee camp awaiting a decision on his asylum claim. Classes at the camp were conducted by a handful of hard-working but unqualified teachers with limited resources and no curriculum.

The school guidance counsellor supplied a school statement. She said Berhan’s account was credible and consistent with what he had told her in their meetings across year 12.

Outcome

The EAS assessor applied a small educational adjustment in both the categories in which Berhan applied. Even in combination, the adjustment was insufficient to get him an offer at his highly competitive first and second preference institutions.

But Berhan did receive and accept an offer to enrol at his third preference university, where he went on to win a Dean’s medal for the best first year law student. He plans to specialise in immigration law and to become an advocate for other asylum seekers.