Equity and Opportunity Award
The University of Western Australia
The university's Aspire UWA program works with 52 schools to encourage students with backgrounds where participation into higher education is traditionally low. 
The schools which partner the program are in low socio-economic areas of Perth, as well as in the Kimberley, Pilbara, mid-west and Gascoyne, where university participation rates are among the lowest in Australia. Three partner schools have more than 95 per cent Indigenous students and 10 have greater than 50 per cent Indigenous students.
According to the judges: "In a strong field featuring many innovative and worthy initiatives, this entry stood out for the scale and extent of its impact.
"It has involved more than 40,000 students, teachers and families, and underpinned a significant increase in low social economic status enrolments in the last six years. We commend the University of Western Australia for walking the walk when it comes to equity and opportunity."
The Aspire program has led to significant increase in the proportion of low socio-economic status students at the University of WA, which traditionally has not enrolled large numbers of such students. First-year retention rates of Aspire students are also higher than the average.