For more than three decades, Australian higher education policy has been guided by a national equity framework focussed on six underrepresented target groups: Indigenous Australians, people from low socioeconomic status backgrounds, people from regional and remote areas, people with disabilities, people from non-English speaking backgrounds, and women in non-traditional areas of study. Despite bringing equitable access to the forefront of university agendas, this policy framework has fostered a somewhat narrow conceptualisation of how educational disadvantage should be addressed. Responding to calls for reform, this paper draws on survey data from 6492 students in NSW government schools to examine the extent to which a new category warrants inclusion in the national framework: first-generation status. We illustrate how being the first in a family to attend university brings distinct equity status and argue for a revision of the national equity framework to recognise and support students who are ‘first’.

在过去的三十多年中，澳大利亚的高等教育政策一直以国家公平框架为指导，该框架的重点是六个代表性不足的目标人群：澳大利亚土著居民，社会经济地位低下的人们，区域和边远地区的人们，残疾人，非英语背景，非传统学习领域的女性。尽管可以公平地进入大学议程的最前沿，但该政策框架在如何解决教育劣势的问题上形成了狭义的概念。为了回应改革的呼声，本文利用了来自新南威尔士州公立学校的6492名学生的调查数据，研究了将新类别纳入国家框架的程度：第一代身份。