Tag: participation

  • Widening participation cold spots: why we can’t afford to wait until they turn 16

    Widening participation cold spots: why we can’t afford to wait until they turn 16

    This blog was kindly authored by Dr Emily Magrath, Director of Programme Development and Impact at IntoUniversity.

    After fielding a flurry of questions from the classroom of 7 and 8 year olds – ‘what is my favourite colour?’, ‘Is this a university?’, ‘Do staff sleep in the building at night?’ – we settle together to explore the question: ‘what is a career?’ Today, this looks like high-vis jackets and hard hats for civil engineers to plan the needed infrastructure for a town; paleontologists codifying discovered fossils; and foley artists creating a soundscape for a forest epic. The students identify the skills they have used and tell me their many ambitions – the room includes possible footballers, doctors, engineers, nurses, lawyers, fashion designers, a taxi driver (like his dad) and a mathematician. This is a starting point, one which gives them years to think about their future possibilities and, more importantly, to build the knowledge and skills to make them future realities. 

    The potential for talent is everywhere

    Geography has become a primary driver of inequality in the UK. Despite initiatives to widen access to university and despite increases in higher education progression rates, areas remain where progression rates and education outcomes remain persistently and stubbornly low. As recently articulated by Alan Francis OBE, Chair of the Social Mobility Commission, this continues to ‘waste talent and limit potential’ across the UK. 

    Mounting evidence is stark in emphasising the particular challenges of these areas, so-called cold spots, which are, in reality, places systematically starved of opportunity with intersecting barriers: geographical isolation; lack of or expensive transport options; lack of teacher quality; and a lack of graduate jobs. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who want to pursue higher education in these locations face hard choices, often commuting to university, struggling to pursue their chosen career in their local area or having to leave it behind. It is not a surprise then to see the UPP Foundation’s inquiry on Higher Education attitudes in Doncaster this year determining that for many young people university is seen as a “bad bet.”

    In the face of these challenging intersections, starting widening participation work at 16 or 17, (or even 14 or 15) is too late. Interventions beginning at these points ultimately have failed many students in these regions – approaches must be anchored from primary age. 

    Why start at primary age?

    It is clear that students from disadvantaged backgrounds face additional educational barriers. Their starting point often shows significant gaps to more advantaged peers, and without intervention, these can become entrenched well before secondary school. In 2023, the Education Policy Institute estimated the disadvantage learning gap at age 5 to be 4.6 months. This was wider than it had been prior to the pandemic. Furthermore, in some areas of deprivation, 50% of young people begin school with delayed language development.

    There are no easy solutions, but earlier intervention is essential for building learning progress, fostering positive educational experiences and supporting students to acquire necessary qualifications for progression to higher education. 

    I would like to study accounting. I want to be rich and I love maths. I would like to study at Oxford university because it’s one of the best universities 

    Year 6 student, IntoUniversity

    Alongside academic development, the implicit and explicit messaging young people hear is key. Young people are full of aspirations, but they need to hear not only how to connect these to actual pathways, but also that they can achieve them. Otherwise, their beliefs can become fixed – often in early teenage years – that university is not for ‘people like them’.

    An antidote to this is to start conversations early and normalise university spaces. I have seen powerful examples of how sustained work can make a difference: a widening participation officer telling 10 and 11 year olds that the local university was “their university,’ they were welcome to ask questions and find out what happened there; seeing toddlers at ease climbing over benches in a lecture theatre at a family learning day; and the 18 year old who told me they just assumed they would go to the city’s university because ‘you took me there every year since I was little’. 

    Building place based ecosystems

    Just after the pandemic, I met a father photographing his son in a graduation gown and mortar board at one of our primary graduation trips to a university – the culmination of a programme where students have imagined a university future for themselves. He proudly showed me photos of his older children in previous years (fortuitously aged so that none had missed out during the pandemic). This engagement with the university was a touchstone for each child and for the family.

    The children go through the programme in Year 4, 5 and 6, and so they know it’s coming, and their siblings know it’s coming. They have an aspiration, and they know about what’s next. It’s a clear message for our school. Education is a journey, it continues in Secondary school and beyond and opens up opportunities. Because it is built into our curriculum, university feels like an entitlement for them. It is available for them.

    Primary School Headteacher about IntoUniversity primary school programme

    The recent Ruskin Institute for Social Equality’s report on coastal cold spots this year similarly emphasised geography’s critical role in higher education access. It showed that, accounting for similar backgrounds, young people can experience as much as a fivefold difference in their likelihood of progressing to HE based on where they live. The report argued that a move away from ‘collaborative, place-based, cross-sector approach’ to one emphasising individual universities’ targets has not served these areas well. 

    Consistent, long-term, sustained work from an early age is the only path forward when countering the entrenched challenges of cold spot areas. These are not challenges that can be solved by one intervention, one school, one charity or one university. Young people in these places need ecosystems of sustained support and opportunities available from an early age. That is how we can shift the dial on persistently low progression rates and ensure equitable access to higher education for all young people, regardless of where they live. 

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  • 6 Effective Ways to Build Attention and Boost Student Participation – Faculty Focus

    6 Effective Ways to Build Attention and Boost Student Participation – Faculty Focus

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  • What does the post-16 education and skills white paper say about access and participation?

    What does the post-16 education and skills white paper say about access and participation?

    Author:
    Charlotte Armstrong

    Published:

    This blog was authored by Charlotte Armstrong, Policy Manager at HEPI.

    It is the second blog in HEPI’s series responding to the post-16 education and skills white paper. You can find the first blog here.

    Despite the post-16 education and skills white paper devoting an entire sub-section to ‘Improving Access and Participation’, the genuine challenges facing students receive minimal attention. The skills agenda within the Government is so strong that the paper frames students, and the student experience, in terms of their potential future contribution to the economy and regional growth. This results in little attempt to understand and address the student experience and the very real challenges that students are currently facing.

    A shift to the skills agenda

    The Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) takes up several bullet points within this section of the paper. In fact, the decision to categorise the LLE under the heading of access provides an interesting insight into the Government’s broader approach to access and participation. Considering the LLE as a subsection of this initiative reframes the focus of access from entrance to higher education to employment outcomes and progression throughout a person’s life. This shift is an idea repeated throughout the white paper that dovetails with the Government’s skills agenda. It indicates that the Government views higher education as a means to add future value to the economy and a tool through which its Industrial Strategy can be furthered. This approach leaves little room for those subjects and disciplines that fall outside the strategy, let alone for learning for its own sake.

    Both modular LLE courses and the newly announced maintenance grants (as announced within the white paper, and previously at the Labour Party Conference) are available only to those studying courses that link to the Government’s wider Industrial Strategy. As may be easily guessed, this results in a list of subjects that largely dovetail with the science and technology sectors – arts and humanities subjects don’t get a look in. Tying maintenance grants to the study of pre-approved science subjects risks disincentivising students from low-income backgrounds from pursuing arts and humanities subjects – potentially entrenching bias and elitism within this sector, as well as furthering the narrative of ‘Mickey Mouse degrees’. As the costs of studying at university continue to rise, some prospective students will struggle to justify studying the subject of their choice if it means losing out on access to maintenance grants. Many of these excluded subjects are already in crisis – as the HEPI / Duolingo report The Language Crisis: Arresting Decline demonstrates, undergraduate enrolments in ‘Language & Area Studies’ have decreased by 20% in five years. Disincentivising students from taking these courses will surely only deepen this crisis further.

    These criticisms do not mean the LLE and the reintroduction of maintenance grants are bad policies. The latter is a particularly welcome development that has long been campaigned for by HEPI and the National Union of Students. However, the limited nature of their current form limits the positive impact they could otherwise have. While there is no current clarification on the precise threshold that will be placed on access to maintenance grants, the Government’s lack of movement on the parental income thresholds within the student finance system likely means only a very small number of students will be eligible.

    When first announcing this policy at the Labour Party conference, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson claimed that the reintroduction of maintenance grants would ensure students spent their time at university ‘learning or training, not working every hour God sends’. This perhaps suggests that maintenance grants will be available in addition to, not instead of, the maintenance loan for those eligible students, although we keenly await the detail which will be outlined by the Chancellor in the upcoming Budget. However, this doesn’t solve the deepening financial crisis facing a large number of students in higher education – many of whom simply will not be eligible for the new maintenance grants.

    HEPI’s research into the Minimum Income Standard for Students highlights how the current maximum maintenance loan covers just half of the costs faced by freshers. Furthermore, the parental income threshold for eligibility for the maximum loan is currently so out of touch that a student from a household with a single parent earning just above the minimum wage will not be eligible for the maximum loan. The Government has sought to highlight that maintenance loans will increase in line with forecast inflation for every academic year, but this is merely a continuation of the current policy and will not address the financial crisis that many students face. Plus, forecast inflation tends to be lower than actual inflation. Similarly, the promise that care leavers will automatically become eligible to receive the maximum rate of loan is also a reiteration of a policy already in place. Care leavers (and estranged students) are classified as independent and therefore are eligible for the maximum loan. To reiterate, this maximum loan covers only half of the costs these students will face while at university.

    Postgraduate access

    The inclusion of postgraduate access in the white paper is a welcome addition – and an unsurprising one when considering how this white paper has framed access in terms of career progression and skills. However, once more, the inclusion of postgraduate students within access goals falls short due to a failure to address the root causes of the widening crises for home postgraduate students in England. Postgraduate taught tuition fees now exceed the maximum postgraduate loan – meaning that a student has used up their entire loan before even considering their cost of living.

    Instead of engaging with this, the paper encourages providers to include postgraduate study in their Access and Participation Plans (APP). This is, in itself, a positive development; however, without addressing the financial barriers faced by many prospective postgraduate students, this inclusion will have very limited impact.

    The access and participation section of the post-16 education and skills white paper provides an insight into how this Government conceives of these issues. However, the focus on students as future employees paints a worrying picture of a Government that is more concerned with next steps than with higher education itself.

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  • SAT and ACT participation remains below pre-pandemic levels

    SAT and ACT participation remains below pre-pandemic levels

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    Dive Brief:

    • Five years after COVID-19 shut down classrooms and shifted college admissions testing policies, the SAT and ACT are still drawing fewer students than during pre-pandemic years.
    • Some 1.38 million students took the ACT in 2025 compared to 1.78 million in 2019, and about 2 million students took the SAT this year versus 2.22 million in 2019, data released recently by the testing companies show. 
    • ​​​​​​​SAT scores, meanwhile, increased only slightly from the high school class of 2024 to the class of 2025, while ACT scores stayed about level. In both cases, scores fell below those from the pre-pandemic year of 2019. 

    Dive Insight:

    The slight uptick in SAT scores and level ACT scores for the high school graduating class of 2025 are still positive trends compared to last year, when average scores on both tests declined year-over-year compared to 2023.

    Still, SAT scores were still “substantially lower than average scores prior to the pandemic,” said College Board, the organization that publishes the test. In 2025, average SAT scores were 521 in reading and writing and 508 in math. In 2019, those averages were 10 points higher for reading and writing (531) and 20 points higher for math (528).

    The ACT average composite score, 19.4, also fell lower than the 2019 score of 20.7.

    For ACT test-takers, 30% met three or more of the four college readiness benchmarks in English, math, reading and science. The ACT benchmarks indicate that students have a 50% chance of earning a B or better in first-year college courses of the same subject and a 75% chance of a C or better. 

    Meanwhile, the dip in overall test takers for both exams continues a trend that dates to at least the pandemic, when colleges shifted toward test-optional policies. For the ACT, however, the numbers began declining much earlier. 

    While testing experts had expected the pandemic to trigger a shift away from K-12 standardized tests, ​​that didn’t materialize to a great degree and standardized and high-stakes testing are still core to K-12. 

    More than 90% of four-year colleges in the U.S. were not expected to require applicants for fall 2026 admission to submit ACT or SAT scores, according to data released in September by FairTest, a nonprofit that advocates for limiting college entrance exams. That’s over 2,000 of the nation’s bachelor-degree granting institutions. 

    Since fall 2020, the number of test-optional or test-free colleges have increased overall, the organization’s annual count shows.

    In the meantime, FairTest said the number of institutions requiring entrance exams minimally increased — from 154 for fall 2025 admissions to 160 for fall 2026 admissions.

    “While a handful of schools have reinstated testing requirements over the past two admissions cycles for a variety of institutional reasons and in response to external pressures, ACT/SAT-optional and test-blind/score-free policies remain the normal baseline in undergraduate admissions,” said FairTest Executive Director Harry Feder in a September statement. “Test-optional policies continue to dominate at national universities, state flagships, and selective liberal arts colleges.”

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  • Defunding Level 7 apprenticeships will undermine widening participation efforts in Higher Education

    Defunding Level 7 apprenticeships will undermine widening participation efforts in Higher Education

    This blog was kindly authored by Professor Abigail Marks, Associate Dean of Research, Newcastle University Business School, and member of the Chartered Association of Business Schools Policy Committee.

    From January 2026, public funding for the vast majority of Level 7 apprenticeships in England will be withdrawn for learners aged 22 and over. Funding will remain for those aged 16 to 21, alongside narrow exceptions for care leavers and learners with Education, Health and Care Plans. Current apprentices will continue to be supported. Ministers present the change as a rebalancing of spending toward younger learners and lower levels, where they argue returns are higher and budgets are more constrained.

    At first sight, this decision looks like a simple trade-off: concentrating scarce resources on school-leavers and early career entrants, while expecting employers to bear the costs of advanced, Master’s-level training. For business schools, however, particularly those that have invested in Level 7 pathways, such as the Senior Leader Apprenticeship, the implications for widening participation are likely to be profound. The Senior Leader Apprenticeship is often integrated with an MBA or Executive MBA. Alongside this, many institutions align Level 7 apprenticeships with specialist MSc degrees, often with embedded professional accreditation. In essence, Level 7 apprenticeships in business schools provide structured, work-based routes into advanced leadership and management education, usually culminating in an MBA or MSc.

    Why Level 7 apprenticeships matter for widening participation

    Since the apprenticeship levy was introduced in 2017, Level 7 programmes have provided business schools with a powerful route to widen participation, particularly among groups that have been historically excluded from postgraduate education. According to the Department for Education’s 2023 Apprenticeship Evaluation, almost half (48 per cent) of Level 7 apprentices are first-generation students, with neither parent having attended university, and around one in five live in the most deprived areas of the country. Analysis by the Chartered Association of Business Schools shows that in 2022/23, a quarter of business and management Level 7 apprentices held no prior degree qualification before starting, with a small minority having no formal qualifications at all. The age profile further underscores the differences between these learners and conventional Master’s students, with 88 per cent of business and management Level 7 apprentices aged over 31, indicating that these programmes primarily serve mature learners and career changers rather than recent graduates.

    This picture contrasts sharply with the traditional MBA market, both in the UK and internationally. Research on MBA demographics from the Association of MBAs in 2023 highlights that students are typically in their late twenties to early thirties, often already possessing a strong undergraduate degree and professional background, and participation is skewed toward those with access to significant financial resources. An Office for Students analysis of Higher Education Statistics Agency data shows that conventional graduate business and management entrants are disproportionately from higher socio-economic backgrounds, with lower representation from disadvantaged areas compared to undergraduate cohorts. In practice, this means that the subsidised Level 7 apprenticeship route has been one of the few mechanisms allowing those without financial capital, prior academic credentials, or family background in higher education to gain access to advanced management education in business schools.

    The economic and societal cost of defunding Level 7

    Employer behaviour is likely to shift in predictable ways once the subsidy is removed. Some large levy-paying firms may continue to sponsor a limited number of Level 7 places, but many smaller employers, as well as organisations in the public and third sectors, will struggle to justify the full cost. Data from the Chartered Management Institute suggests that 60 per cent of Level 7 management apprentices are in public services such as the NHS, social care, and local government. Less than 10 per cent are in FTSE 350 companies. Consequently, there is a risk of further narrowing provision to those already in advantaged positions.

    The progression ladder is also threatened. Level 7 apprenticeships have been a natural progression for people who began at Levels 3 to 5, building their qualifications as they moved into supervisory roles. Closing the door at this point reinforces the glass ceiling for those seeking to rise from technical or frontline work into leadership. With data from the Department for Education reported in FE Week reporting that 89 per cent of Level 7 apprentices are currently aged over 22, the vast majority of those who have benefited from these opportunities will be excluded from January 2026.

    The consequences extend beyond widening participation metrics. Leadership and management skills are consistently linked to firm-level productivity and the diffusion of innovation. Studies such as the World Management Survey have shown that effective management correlates strongly with higher productivity and competitiveness. Restricting adult access to advanced apprenticeships risks slowing the spread of these practices across the economy. For business schools, it reduces their ability to act as engines of regional development and knowledge transfer. At a national level, the UK’s prospects for growth depend not only on new entrants but also on upskilling the existing workforce. Apprenticeships have been one of the few proven ways of achieving this. If opportunities narrow, it is possible that firms may struggle to adopt new technologies, deliver green transitions, or address regional productivity gaps. The effects may also be felt in export performance, scale-up survival, and international competitiveness.

    The removal of public funding for adults over 21 threatens to dismantle a pathway that has enabled business schools to transform the profile of their postgraduate cohorts. Where once mature students, first-generation graduates, and learners from deprived regions could progress into Master’s-level management education, the policy shift risks returning provision in England to a preserve of the already advantaged. In contrast, our European counterparts, where degree and higher-level apprenticeships retain open access for adults, will continue to allow business schools to deliver on widening participation commitments across the life course.

    Lessons from Europe

    Germany’s dual study system has expanded, with degree-apprenticeship style programmes now making up almost five per cent of higher education enrolments. Data from the OECD shows that the proportion of young adults aged 25–34 with a tertiary degree in Germany has risen to around 40 per cent, driven partly by these integrated vocational–academic routes. Switzerland shows even more dramatic results: between 2000 and 2021, the share of 25–34-year-olds with a tertiary qualification rose from 26 to 52 per cent. Crucially, Switzerland also leads Europe in lifelong learning, with around 67.5 per cent of adults aged 25–65 participating in continuing education and training. For Swiss business schools, this creates a mature, diverse learner base and allows firms to continually upgrade leadership and management capacity. Both countries demonstrate how keeping lifelong pathways open is central to sustaining firm-level productivity, innovation, and international competitiveness.

    Conclusion

     The decision to defund most adult participation at Level 7 thus represents more than a budgetary tweak. It narrows opportunities in advanced management education and risks reversing progress in widening participation. Unless English business schools, employers, and policymakers act swiftly to design new pathways, the effect will be a return to elite provision. More worryingly, England risks falling behind international counterparts in building the leadership capacity that underpins innovation, productivity, and growth.

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  • OfS Access and Participation data dashboards, 2025 release

    OfS Access and Participation data dashboards, 2025 release

    The sector level dashboards that cover student characteristics have a provider-level parallel – the access and participation dashboards do not have a regulatory role but are provided as evidence to support institutions develop access and participation plans.

    Though much A&P activity is pre-determined – the current system pretty much insists that universities work with schools locally and address stuff highlighted in the national Equality of Outcomes Risk Register (EORR). It’s a cheeky John Blake way of embedding a national agenda into what are meant to be provider level plans (that, technically, unlock the ability to charge fees up to the higher level) but it could also be argued that provider specific work (particularly on participation measures rather than access) has been underexamined.

    The A&P dashboards are a way to focus attention on what may end up being institutionally bound problems – the kinds of things that providers can fix, and quickly, rather than the socio-economic learning revolution end of things that requires a radicalised cadre of hardened activists to lead and inspire the proletariat, or something.

    We certainly don’t get any detailed mappings between numeric targets declared in individual plans and the data – although my colleague Jim did have a go at that a while ago. Instead this is just the raw information for you to examine, hopefully in an easier to use and speedier fashion than the official version (which requires a user guide, no less)

    Fun with indicators

    There are four dashboards here, covering most of what OfS presents in the mega-board. Most of what I’ve done examines four year aggregations rather than individual years (though there is a timeseries at provider level), I’ve just opted for the 95 per cent confidence interval to show the significance of indicator values, and there’s a few other minor pieces that I’ve not bothered with or set a sensible default on.

    I know that nobody reads this for data dashboard design tips, but for me a series of simpler dashboards are far more useful to the average reader than a single behemoth that can do anything – and the way HESA presents (in the main) very simple tables or plain charts to illustrate variations across the sector represents to me a gold standard for provider level data. OfS is a provider of official statistics, and as such is well aware that section V3.1 of the code of practice requires that:

    Statistics, data and explanatory material should be relevant and presented in a clear, unambiguous way that supports and promotes use by all types of users

    And I don’t think we are quite there yet with what we have, while the simple release of a series of flat tables might get us closer

    If you like it you should have put a confidence interval on it

    To start with, here is a tool for constructing ranked displays of providers against a single metric – here defined as a life cycle stage (access, continuation, completion, attainment, progression) expressed as a percentage of successful achievements for a given subgroup.

    Choose your split indicator type on the top right, and the actual indicator on the top right – select the life cycle stage on the box in the middle, and set mode and level (note certain splits and stages may only be available for certain modes and levels). You can highlight a provider of interest using the box on the bottom right, and also find an overall sector average by searching on “*”. The colours show provider group, and the arrows are upper and lower confidence bounds at the standard 95 per cent level.

    You’ll note that some of the indicators show intersections – with versions of multiple indicators shown together. This allows you to look at, say, white students from a more deprived background. The denominator in the tool tip is the number students in that population, not the number of students where data is available.

    [singles rank]

    I’ve also done a version allowing you to look at all single indicators at a provider level – which might help you to spot particular outliers that may need further analysis. Here, each mark is a split indicator (just the useful ones, I’ve omitted stuff like “POLAR quintiles 1,2,4, and 5” which is really only worth bothering with for gap analysis), you can select provider, mode, and level at the top and highlight a split group (eg “Age (broad)”) or split (eg “Mature aged 21 and over”).

    Note here that access refers to the proportion of all entrants from a given sub-group, so even though I’ve shown it on the same axis for the sake of space it shows a slightly different thing – the other lifecycle stages relate to a success (be that in continuation, progression or whatever) based on how OfS defines “success”.

    [singles provider]

    Oops upside your head

    As you’ve probably spotted from the first section, to really get things out of this data you need to compare splits with other relevant splits. We are talking, then, about gaps – on any of the lifecycle stages – between two groups of students. The classic example is the attainment gap between white and Black students, but you can have all kinds of gaps.

    This first one is across a single provider, and for the four lifecycle stages (this time, we don’t get access) you can select your indicator type and two indicators to get the gap between them (mode, and level, are at the bottom of the screen). When you set your two split, the largest or most common group tends to be on indicator 1 – that’s just the way the data is designed.

    [gaps provider]

    As a quick context you can look for “*” again on the provider name filter to get sector averages, but I’ve also built a sector ranking to help you put your performance in context with similar providers.

    This is like a cross between the single ranking and the provider-level gaps analysis – you just need to set the two splits in the same way.

    [gaps rank]

    Sign o’ the times

    The four year aggregates are handy for most applications, but as you being to drill in you are going to start wondering about individual years – are things getting gradually worse or gradually better? Here I’ve plotted all the individual year data we get – which is, of course, different for each lifecycle stage (because of when data becomes available). This is at a provider level (filter on the top right) and I’ve included confidence intervals at 95 per cent in a lighter colour.

    [gaps provider timeseries]

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  • The PM’s announcement on higher level participation is a win for the HE sector

    The PM’s announcement on higher level participation is a win for the HE sector

    You could read “abolishing the 50 per cent participation target” as a vote of no-confidence in higher education, a knee-jerk appeal to culturally conservative working-class voters. But that would be both a political/tactical mistake and a fundamental misreading of the policy landscape.

    To recap: in his leader’s speech to Labour Party Conference on Tuesday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that two thirds of people under 25 should participate in higher level learning, whether in the form of academic, technical, or work-based training, with at least ten per cent pursuing technical education or apprenticeships by 2040.

    So let’s start by acknowledging, as DK does elsewhere on the site, that the 50 per cent participation target has a totemic status in public discourse about higher education that far outweighs its contemporary relevance. And, further, that party conference speeches are a time for broad strokes and vibes-based narrativising for the party faithful, and soundbites for the small segment of the public that is paying attention, not for detailed policy discussions.

    An analysis of Starmer’s speech on Labour List suggests, for example, that the new target signals a decisive break with New Labour, something that most younger voters, including many in the post-compulsory education sector, don’t give the proverbial crap about.

    True North

    What this announcement does is, finally, give the sector something positive to rally around. Universities UK advocated nearly exactly this target in its blueprint for the new government, almost exactly a year ago, suggesting that there should be a target of 70 per cent participation in tertiary education at level four and above by 2040. Setting aside the 3.333 percentage point difference, that’s a win, and a clear vote of confidence in the post-compulsory sector.

    Higher education is slowly recovering from its long-standing case of main character syndrome. Anyone reading the policy runes knows that the direction of travel is towards building a mixed tertiary economy, informed if not actively driven by skills needs data. That approach tallies with broader questions about the costs and financing of dominant models of (residential, full time) higher education, the capacity of the economy to absorb successive cohorts of graduates in ways that meet their expectations, and the problematic political implications of creating a hollowed out labour market in which it it is ever-more difficult to be economically or culturally secure without a degree.

    The difference between the last government and this one is that it’s trying to find a way to critique the equity and sustainability of all this without suggesting that higher education itself is somehow culturally suspect, or some kind of economic Ponzi scheme. Many in the sector have at times in recent years raged at the notion that in order to promote technical and work-based education options you have to attack “university” education. Clearly not only are both important but they are often pretty much the same exact thing.

    What has been missing hitherto, though, is any kind of clear sense from government about what it thinks the solution is. There have been signals about greater coordination, clarification of the roles of different kinds of institution, and some recent signals around the desirability of “specialisation” – and there’s been some hard knocks for higher education providers on funding. None of it adds up to much, with policy detail promised in the forthcoming post-16 education and skills white paper.

    Answers on a postcard

    But now, the essay question is clear: what will it take to deliver two-thirds higher level learning on that scale?

    And to answer that question, you need to look at both supply and demand. On the supply side, there’s indications that the market alone will struggle to deliver the diversity of offer that might be required, particularly where provision is untested, expensive, and risky. Coordination and collaboration could help to address some of those issues by creating scale and pooling risk, and in some areas of the country, or industries, there may be an appetite to start to tackle those challenges spontaneously. However, to achieve a meaningful step change, policy intervention may be required to give providers confidence that developing new provision is not going to ultimately damage their own sustainability.

    But it is on the demand side that the challenge really lies – and it’s worth noting that with nearly a million young people not in education, employment or training, the model in which exam results at age 16 or 18 determine your whole future is, objectively, whack. But you can offer all the tantalising innovative learning opportunities you want, if people feel they can’t afford it, or don’t have the time or energy to invest, or can’t see an outcome, or just don’t think it’ll be that interesting, or have to stop working to access it, they just won’t come. Far more thought has to be given to what might motivate young people to take up education and training opportunities, and the right kind of targeted funding put in place to make that real.

    The other big existential question is scaling work-based education opportunities. Lots of young people are interested in apprenticeships, and lots of higher education providers are keen to offer them; the challenge is about employers being able to accommodate them. It might be about looking to existing practice in teacher education or health education, or about reimagining how work-based learning should be configured and funded, but it’s going to take, probably, industry-specific workforce strategies that are simultaneously very robust on the education and skills needs while being somewhat agnostic on the delivery mechanism. There may need to be a gentle loosening of the conditions on which something is designated an apprenticeship.

    The point is, whatever the optics around “50 per cent participation” this moment should be an invigorating one, causing the sector’s finest minds to focus on what the answer to the question is. This is a sector that has always been in the business of changing lives. Now it’s time to show it can change how it thinks about how to do that.

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  • The fifty per cent participation target is no more. Again.

    The fifty per cent participation target is no more. Again.

    Dare we say he felt the hand of history on his shoulder?

    In his Labour Party Conference speech Prime Minister Keir Starmer set a new participation target for participation in education at level 4 and above (including higher education, further education, and some apprenticeships) for young people. He said:

    Two thirds of our children should either go to university or take on a gold standard apprenticeship

    As subsequently briefed, the target (which replaces, somehow, the old 50 per cent target from the Blair years) relates to higher skills, either through university, further education or taking on a gold standard apprenticeship. It will include at least ten percent of young people pursuing higher technical education or apprenticeships that the economy needs by 2040, a near doubling of today’s figure.

    Alongside a restatement of recent further education policies (£800m extra into funding for 16-19 year olds in FE next year, and measures to make FE “world class”) Starmer couched the target in the language of “respect”, drawing on the now familiar tale of his father, the toolmaker.

    Because if you are a kid or a parent of a kid who chooses an apprenticeship, what does it say to you? Do we genuinely, as a country – afford them the same respect?

    The numbers now?

    We don’t really have the data at hand to judge progress against the target to date – we would imagine a new measure would be developed. The press release points to the most recent data we have relating to participation in any level four education before the age of 25 (CHEP-25 “all level four”): around half of the cohort that turned 15 in 2012-13 (and thus might have entered university in 2015-16) participated in the kind of provision the prime minister talked about. As this cohort turned 25 in 2022-23, we do not yet have data for future cohorts.

    In the last two recruitment cycles (2024, and 2025) 37 per cent of 18 year olds in England entered university directly from school via UCAS. This equates to 240,510 young people in 2024 and 249,780 in 2025 – out of an England domiciled 18 year old population of 650,710 in 2024 and 675,710 in 2025.

    In contrast just 15,085 adults (19+) participated in-year in provision at level four or above in the further education and skills sector during 2023-24. And there were 100,490 higher (level 4) apprenticeship starts in the same year.

    The uncancellable target

    It was originally proposed by Tony Blair during his 1999 leader’s address to conference that the government should have:

    a target of 50 per cent of young adults going into higher education in the next century.

    And this plan was reiterated in the 2001 manifesto, and the promise maintained in both 2005 and 2010 :

    It is time for an historic commitment to open higher education to half of all young people before they are 30, combined with increased investment to maintain academic standards.

    The original target date was 2010, but by 2008 then universities minister John Denham had already conceded that this target would not be met. And it was not met under a Labour government.

    It was never universally popular – in 2009 the CBI made a high profile call to drop the 50 per cent aspiration. Under Coalition Prime Minister David Cameron, then Business Secretary Vince Cable was the first of many to formally cancel the target. On 12 October 2010 he told the House of Commons that:

    We must not perpetuate the idea, encouraged by the pursuit of a misguided 50% participation target, that the only valued option for an 18-year-old is a three-year academic course at university. Vocational training, including apprenticeships, can be just as valuable as a degree, if not more so

    Which you’d imagine would be the end of it, a non-binding (it never featured in legislation) aspiration set by the previous administration rejected by a new minister.

    Cancel culture

    As the magic figure approached (the goal was achieved in 2019) the general disapproval of the long-scrapped target shifted into outright hostility. By 2017 Nick Boles (remember him?) was not outside the political mainstream in saying:

    The policy of unbridled expansion has now reached its logical conclusion.

    All to no avail. By 2020 the ever-thoughtful Gavin Williamson seemed he was making it into a personal vendetta:

    When Tony Blair uttered that 50 per cent target for university attendance, he cast aside the other 50 per cent. It was a target for the sake of a target, not with a purpose… As Education Secretary, I will stand for the forgotten 50 per cent.

    While former universities minister Chris Skidmore was characteristically a little more measured in his critique. Just about the only politician willing to stick up for the idea was Tony Blair himself, who in 2022 backed calls for 70 per cent of young people to enter higher education.

    By this point, Rishi Sunak had become Prime Minister, and was telling the 2023 Conservative conference that:

    As he renewed another familiar attack on “rip off degrees”. This brought about a robust response from Keir Starmer as leader of the opposition:

    I never thought I would hear a modern Conservative Prime Minister say that 50 per cent of our children going to university was a “false dream”. My Dad felt the disrespect of vocational skills all his life. But the solution is not and never will be levelling-down the working class aspiration to go to university.

    If anything, Starmer missed the opportunity at that stage to point out the volume of vocational going on in universities – but that probably speaks to the polling and public perception of “universities” that reinforces the challenge the sector has in surfacing it all.

    Delivery, delivery, delivery

    Targets and aspirations are all very well, but you would expect a government as focused on “delivery” as our current one to have a clear plan to drive up participation. And though welcome, the previously announced funding for further education is not it.

    Driving up participation to such a level is far beyond what can be achieved by tweaks around apprenticeship incentives or even the roll-out of the (surprisingly unpopular) Lifelong Learning Entitlement. We are promised more details about how it’s going to work in the forthcoming post-16 education white paper.

    History tells us that the majority of any increase in participation at level 4 will come from the efforts of our universities, through new courses and innovative delivery modes. And this will take participation in higher education far above the 50 per cent target.

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  • To make real progress on widening participation in higher education, we need a new mission

    To make real progress on widening participation in higher education, we need a new mission

    The promise of higher education as a pathway to opportunity has never been more important, or more precarious.

    While overall university participation has reached record levels, this headline figure masks a troubling reality: where you’re born in England increasingly determines whether you’ll ever set foot on a university campus. And even once students do get their foot in the door, they might not have the support system in place – financially as well as academically – to succeed and thrive.

    It is in this context that the UPP Foundation has today published the concluding paper in its widening participation inquiry. Mission Critical: six recommendations for the widening participation agenda is our attempt to fill in the gaps that the government left in its opportunity mission around widening participation, and to provide targets and mechanisms by which it can achieve success in this area.

    Doing “getting in” right

    For years, the biggest single aim of widening participation work has been “getting in” – ensuring that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are supported to attend university, most often by undertaking a bachelor’s degree as a residential student. The aim of growing participation has come under political scrutiny in recent years and is no longer an accepted mission across the political spectrum.

    But as our inquiry’s earlier papers highlight, there remains significant gaps in participation. Although more young people are going to university than ever before, there are stark disparities in the rates at which young people from different parts of the country attend university. If we believe, as I do, that talent is not simply concentrated in London and the South East, then by implication if opportunity is spread out more evenly, participation in higher education needs to grow.

    That’s why our first recommendation is a “triple lock” widening participation target. This includes a gap of no more than ten percentage points between the highest and lowest regional HE participation rates; plus a 50 per cent floor for progression to HE at 18-19 across all regions; and a target for 70 per cent of the whole English population to have studied at level 4 or above by the age of 25, as advocated by Universities UK. Meeting these targets will ensure that “getting in” really is for everyone.

    Onwards and upwards

    But this is not enough in isolation. The people we spoke to in Doncaster and Nottingham made it clear that “getting on” and “getting out” are equally important parts of the widening participation struggle – with the cost of learning a major barrier to full participation in university life.

    With that in mind, we’re calling for the restoration of maintenance loans to 2021 real-terms levels by the end of the decade, as well as additional maintenance grants for those eligible for free school meals in the last six years.

    We also want universities that are currently spending millions of pounds on bursaries and hardship funds to put that money towards outreach in the most challenging cold spots, as well as ensuring that the wider student experiences that undergrads cherish are available to all. That’s why it makes sense for a proportion of the proceeds from the proposed international student fee levy, if introduced, to be ring fenced to support an expanded access and participation plan regime, prioritising disadvantaged students from cold spot backgrounds.

    Revitalisation

    Finally, widening participation needs to address the short-term mindset that grips young people both before and during their time at university.

    Young people are more mindful of their finances than ever before, with many opting out of university in favour of a job in places where graduate careers are scarce and those who do choose to attend keeping one eye on their present and future earnings even before they’ve graduated.

    If we are to revitalise the widening participation agenda, we have to bring employability to the fore, both by reconfiguring the Office for Students’ B3 metric on positive student outcomes and by bringing employers into the design and outputs of university study. There are already fantastic examples of this working in practice across the sector, such as at London South Bank’s energy advice centre and Bristol University’s career- and community-oriented dental school. It’s time for the sector to pick up these ideas and run with them.

    The young person in Doncaster with the same grades and aspirations as their counterpart in Surrey faces not just different odds of getting to university, but different expectations about what’s possible. When we fail to address these disparities, we’re not just perpetuating inequality, we’re actively weakening the economic foundations that the whole country depends on.

    What our new report offers is a chance to refocus the widening participation agenda around a series of ambitious but achievable targets. Getting in, getting on and getting out are all crucial parts of the higher education cycle, especially for those who otherwise wouldn’t attend. If the government want to take their widening participation priorities seriously, all three aspects need to take their place in the sun.

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  • Widening participation should stretch beyond convenient local universities

    Widening participation should stretch beyond convenient local universities

    Secondary schools, particularly those in regions with a high density of higher education providers, are inundated with offers of university outreach initiatives.

    Meanwhile university widening participation and schools liaison teams, acting (in England) on the principles of their respective access and participation plans (APPs), channel their efforts towards regions, schools, and demographics currently underrepresented in their institution.

    The result is a substantial duplication of effort and resources from institutions competing within the HE marketplace.

    Variety pack

    The typical set of university partnerships for many schools appears to be a local Russell Group university, a local post-92 university, and the designated Oxford and/or Cambridge link college for their region.

    Encounters with local universities may be facilitated by a Uni Connect partnership, although a recent evaluation revealed inconsistencies in the extent to which partnerships offered a ‘joined up’ approach to locally targeted outreach. Local universities are undoubtedly convenient. Campus visits require minimal travel time and costs, and widening participation teams may have a strong knowledge of local issues and individual schools.

    However, relying on the convenience of local institutions both reinforces the tendencies amongst applicants in many regions to stay close to home for university without considering other options, and risks perpetuating undermatch amongst when local universities do not provide a suitable academic match. For example, the Uni Connect East Anglia partnership, neaco, includes the University of Cambridge, Anglia Ruskin University, the University of East Anglia, and several others.

    There exists a large gap between the ABB entry requirements for Engineering at UEA compared to the A*A*A asked for at Cambridge. Students with predicted grades within this gap have a substantial risk of undermatching if they narrow their options in line with the Uni Connect parameters.

    Three at the point of use

    The three-tiered university outreach provision, sometimes partially supported by Uni Connect, goes some way towards achieving Gatsby Benchmark 7:

    encounters with further and higher education appropriate to the needs of each pupil

    Yet it seems unlikely that three universities could represent the diverse spectrum of HE offerings across the country, nor truly provide a good match for every pupil.

    There are two issues to address here: firstly, that locally-targeted outreach should not be solely conducted by local universities; and secondly, that universities must balance their widening participation and recruitment priorities to avoid duplication of resources and overwhelming target schools.

    A university, admittedly with the resources to do so, can offer informed and meaningful regionally-targeted outreach despite not being located in the immediate vicinity of target schools. I am a long-standing proponent of the Oxbridge Link Area scheme, which provides schools with a point of contact at each university, and encourages WP practitioners to develop knowledge about and relationships with stakeholders in specific UK regions.

    Most recently, I teamed up with the charity Aspire Liverpool for the latest iteration of the Magdalene College Liverpool Event – a day of super-curricular exploration for 700 Year 10 pupils led by academics and Student Ambassadors, held in Liverpool’s St George’s Hall.

    From Cambridge to Merseyside

    One of the comments I receive most from pupils when I visit schools in Merseyside and North Wales is that they are surprised, but pleased, that a representative from Cambridge showed up for them. In the case of the Liverpool event, my team arrived determined to show the pupils that a coachload of busy academics took the time to travel to Liverpool, because we think these pupils are worth investing time and resources in, and have the potential to apply to competitive universities should they choose to. With a recruitment hat on, I’m keen to continue to develop the institutional memory amongst our target schools of being the college and university who can be relied upon to deliver high-quality locally-targeted outreach provision.

    Working with Aspire Liverpool helps us to target those schools which haven’t historically engaged with our outreach programmes, and helps to address the second issue I put forward, regarding the risk of duplication of outreach offerings from multiple universities. Attempting to collaborate with universities targeting similar groups of students can result in competition for recruitment. Whilst I have rarely delivered activities in partnership with, for example, the University of Liverpool or the University of Oxford, I liaise with their respective WP teams to develop an understanding of what activities students may be receiving from other providers, and to avoid clashes between the dates of our flagship events.

    Universities are often more comfortable collaborating with third-sector organisations such as The Brilliant Club, if they can demonstrate quality and value, as promised by successful applicants to the recent Equality in Higher Education Fund. Such organisations can help to scale up activities which are challenging for a single university WP team to provide, such as the attainment-raising initiatives promised in many Access and Participation Plans.

    So, where do we go from here?

    How can students be presented with a sufficiently wide range of HE options to increase their likelihood of finding a suitable academic match, whilst avoiding the duplication of effort and resources by each individual HE provider? The UCAS Outreach Connection Service, launched to UCAS advisers in 2024, may go some way towards highlighting the range of opportunities available, and allowing teachers to point students in the right direction towards potentially suitable universities and courses.

    And potential reforms to Uni Connect may establish a more defined strategic purpose for the partnerships, and perhaps space in the calendar to deliver campus visits or residentials for other partnerships’ target schools. Without overwhelming students by the sheer number of HE options available, it is doing them a disservice by not making them aware of the range of choices both in their home region and beyond.

    It remains crucial to understand the local contexts in which students are making their university choices, and is the responsibility of WP teams to set aside their recruitment angle to some extent, to provide opportunities for students to engage with multiple universities in their search for the perfect match.

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