ECU South West graduation ceremony 2025.
Bunbury mother Smitha Nair graduates from Edith Cowan University (ECU) with a Diploma of Psychology after returning to study as a mature age student. On the same day, her 9-year-old daughter Sana Subramaniam has graduated from the ECU's Children's University in the South West.
"The Children's University gave Sana an opportunity to continue to learn outside of the classroom in school holidays, rather than being on digital devices," Smitha Nair said.
Children's University gave Sana an opportunity to learn beyond the classroom.
"Education is very important to our family, I believe it is a key to empowerment."
The Children's University graduation was the first for the South West cohort, with 33 children graduating from the program in the region.
South West partnering schools included Australind Primary School, Clifton Park Primary School, Dalyellup Primary School and Leschenault Catholic Primary School.
The initiative connects families to local learning opportunities.
The Children's University program offers a variety of extracurricular learning for children, with engaging hands-on ECU school holiday programs available to students and their families.
ECU Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Regional Futures) Professor Cobie Rudd who bought the program to WA in 2017, said expanding the program into the regions encourages and connects families to local learning opportunities and aims to ignite children's interest in health careers.
"We want children in our regional areas to enjoy the same access to educational opportunities as those in the city," Professor Rudd said.
"The Children's University aims to inspire a passion for lifelong learning from a young age, strengthen educational engagement, widen participation, and support students from diverse backgrounds to one day access higher education. We want to work now to grow the regional health workforce we need for the future.
"We want to raise aspirations, boost achievement and instil a love of learning in the students who participate – and that is exactly the outcome we are seeing."
1150 children have graduated from the Children's University since 2017.
Celebrating achievements beyond the classroom
382 children from 14 Perth metropolitan and four South West schools completed an astounding 29 331 hours of extracurricular learning in 2024.
Supported by a range of ECU Academics from the School of Medical and Health Sciences and the School of Nursing and Midwifery, the children and their families were able to participate in 18 ECU school holiday workshops now including the ECU South West Bunbury Campus.
At these workshops, they experienced a wide variety of ECU course-related learning activities such as discovering secrets about the human skeleton, bone strength and how to prevent osteoporosis, investigating essential nursing tools as well as exploring ECU's state of the art facilities such as the South West nursing demonstration ward.
Now as an ECU Children's University Alumni, Sana Subramaniam will continue her love of learning outside of the classroom with piano, Indian Classical dance lessons, and Taekwondo.
"The experience has inspired Sana to keep learning beyond the traditional classroom. She hopes to one day be an artist or art teacher, but she is also passionate about the environment," Smitha Nair said.
2025 and beyond
ECU first introduced Children's University to WA in 2017 and to date, over 1150 children have graduated.
ECU South West plans to continue CU in the South West with a focus on health through its new University Department of Rural Health South West, with funding from the Commonwealth Government's Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training Program. To grow the regional health workforce, ECU is keen to raise aspirations from the earliest age.
For more information about how to become involved with the Children's University at ECU, contact childrensunivesrity@ecu.edu.au.
Background:
- The Children's University originated in the United Kingdom and is based on the notion that many of life's most valuable lessons are learnt outside of the classroom.
- ECU was the first University to deliver this extracurricular program to students in Western Australia.
- Although open to all, Children's University aims to reach children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
