A Taste of Oxford for Visitors from the Aurora Education Foundation

The Aurora Education Foundation is an Indigenous organisation that supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to realise their full educational potential. The Foundation aims to address systemic weaknesses that lead to disparities in the educational outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Their goal is to effect change through the delivery of a range of interconnected programmes, working with Indigenous students throughout each stage of their educational journey and beyond.

The students and representatives from the Aurora Education Foundation were visiting Oxford as part of their annual Study Tour, where high-achieving students tour some of the world’s best universities including Oxford, Cambridge and LSE and US institutions such as Harvard, UC Berkeley and Stanford. The tour provides students with an opportunity to gain an understanding of their options and pathways for success at non-Australian universities.

On their visit to Oriel, participants experienced lunch in Oriel’s Hall before taking a tour of the College, where they heard more from current graduate students about the Oxford application process and student life in Oxford.

The tour was led by Oriel graduate student Ethan ‘Jappiljarri’ Taylor, a Charlie Perkins Scholarship and Trinity College AGL Shaw Scholarship holder, who is studying for an MPhil in Politics (Political Theory) with a focus on the use of language to socially and politically disenfranchise and exclude Aboriginal people from intellectual and political discourse. The Charlie Perkins Scholarship is awarded by the Aurora Education Foundation to provide an opportunity for talented Indigenous Australian students to undertake postgraduate study at the University of Oxford or University of Cambridge.

In the ten years that is has been running, the Aurora Study Tour has had a big impact, with over 170 students given the opportunity to take part and 62 participants going on to make an application to an overseas university, with a 94% acceptance rate. Oriel was pleased to play a part in supporting this work by facilitating a visit for students, and we hope to see some of them return to Oxford in the future.