Tag: Widening

  • 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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  • Podcast: Cuts, student suicide, widening access

    Podcast: Cuts, student suicide, widening access

    This week on the podcast we examine the government’s brutal funding cuts to universities.

    What does the £108m reduction in the Strategic Priorities Grant mean for higher education, and why are media studies and journalism courses losing their high-cost subject funding?

    Plus we discuss the independent review of student suicides, and explore new research on widening participation and regional disparities.

    With Shân Wareing, Vice Chancellor at Middlesex University, Richard Brabner, Executive Chair at the UPP Foundation, Debbie McVitty, Editor at Wonkhe and presented by Jim Dickinson, Associate Editor at Wonkhe.

    Read more

    Why not take a risk-based approach to discrimination or harassment on campus?

    Whatuni Student Choice Awards

    For those in HE cold spots, higher education isn’t presenting as a good bet

    A review of student suicides suggests that standards are now necessary

    What have coroner’s reports said about student suicide?

    A brutal budget for strategic priorities from the Department for Education

    Why are we so embarrassed about Erasmus?

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  • The widening access narrative must return to speaking about places

    The widening access narrative must return to speaking about places

    Widening access to higher education has experienced a precipitous fall from grace in the eyes of politicians over the last ten years – a fall that may have slowed slightly but as yet to stop under this government.

    This fall may have coincided with the shift away from place-based to institutional-focused approaches to the problem. The access and participation plan regime may have stopped widening participation slipping out of sight completely but as our latest report shows, they have done little to increase higher education participation for those from the poorest backgrounds, particularly in rural and coastal areas.

    Split geographies

    The report – Coast and country: access to higher education cold spots in England – looks at the data published annually by the Department of Education on participation in higher education by free school meal (FSM) backgrounds. There are things we know about what this data shows as outlined in previous reports I have written and more recent work such as that from the Sutton Trust – in particular that London does far better than everywhere else.

    In this report, though, we show exactly how much. The national higher education participation rate in 2022–23 for those from FSM backgrounds was 29 per cent. If you take out London, which has only 16 per cent of the population of England, it falls to 23 per cent. London is covering up a much more challenging situation in the rest of the country than we are prepared to admit.

    These challenges increase as areas get smaller. The report looks at the relationship between the size of an area and the FSM higher education participation rate. It drops steadily as population decreases from 43 per cent in big cities to 18 per cent in rural villages. Nor is the situation improving. The gap between London and the other 84 per cent of the population has increased 3 per cent from 2012–23 to 2022–23 and just under 3 per cent between predominantly urban areas and predominantly rural areas over the same period.

    Many coastal areas in England – especially seaside resorts – have well documented problems with poverty, unemployment and health inequalities and higher education participation can be added to that list. The higher education participation rate for those from FSM backgrounds coastal communities was 11 per cent lower than in inland areas in 2022–23 with in many areas less than one in five such young people going onto higher education. There is an overlap here between rural and coastal areas here with the South West especially including areas of lower higher education participation.

    It is often said that the differences in higher education participation described above are associated with attainment in schools. Increasing attainment was the priority where widening access work was concerned for the Office for Students for a number of years. In the report, we map GSCE attainment at the area level against FSM higher education participation – and the correlation is indeed strong.

    It is far weaker, though, in villages and coastal areas than the rest of the country. This suggest that in the places where the problems are the greatest, better GCSE results alone won’t be enough. In 2022–23, six of the ten areas with the lowest levels of higher education participation did not have a university campus within them. What provision exists also matters.

    We need new (old) stories

    If any progress in closing the gaps between regions described above is to be made then place must again become the central focus for widening access to higher education work – as it was when the last Labour government championed the issue so vigorously in the 2000s.

    The pendulum has swung too far since then toward what institutions themselves do. Consequently, that political link between widening access, opportunity and growth has been broken. It is possible that the government itself will swing the pendulum back to place, and some of the signs coming from the Office for Students in recent months have been promising.

    However, higher education providers themselves can take the initiative themselves here and look for new ways to form stronger partnerships – ones that take whatever replaces Uni Connect as the start, not the endpoint, of what regional collaboration means.

    While the sector’s financial challenges make competition for students more intensive than it has ever been – and thus collaboration in this area more difficult – the value of higher education itself is being questioned by young people more than it ever has been since participation increased rapidly in the 1990s. Fighting between each other for young people’s and their schools’ attention won’t convince those, especially from the poorest backgrounds, that higher education is worth it. But collaboration will.

    Collaboration won’t produce additional provision in rural and coastal areas, or the money to fund it. But unless we shift the story and the practice of widening access back to place, this additional provision will never come.

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  • The UPP Foundation is launching a new inquiry into widening participation to support the government’s opportunity mission

    The UPP Foundation is launching a new inquiry into widening participation to support the government’s opportunity mission

    Twenty-five years on from Blair’s target for 50 per cent of young people to go to higher education, the Labour Party set out a new ambition to “break down barriers to opportunity.”

    The opportunity mission articulates a multi-generational challenge: to make sure that children and young people can get on, no matter what their background; to change Britain so that a child’s future earnings are no longer limited by those of their parents; and to make Britain one of the fairest countries in the OECD. It is a fundamentally important challenge, and one that will be years in the undertaking.

    Widening participation in higher education plays a huge part in this mission, and it is for that reason that the UPP Foundation has announced a major new inquiry into the future of widening participation and student success. We have launched this inquiry by publishing a short “state of the nation” summary of the key issues in 2025. Because while success in the opportunity mission would transform the shape of British society, Labour is all too aware of the differences between the optimism of Blair’s famous 50 per cent pledge and the markedly different political and economic circumstances Keir Starmer’s government finds itself in now.

    A changed landscape

    Universities and schools face significant headwinds when it comes to dismantling the gaps students face when looking to get in and get on. The HE sector is facing well-publicised and unprecedented financial challenges, with the recent rise in fees doing nothing to alleviate pressure amid rising costs. With institutions contemplating restructuring moves and the government no closer to outlining a solution for widespread mounting deficits amid heavy fiscal weather, it is hard to see universities or the government finding much bandwidth for widening participation in the near future.

    There is also no equivalent target or metric that captures the challenge in quite the same way as Blair’s. This is understandable. Part of the reason no similar metric presents itself is because widening participation is now seen as multidimensional: not just focused on access to university, but also continuation rates, graduate outcomes, and less easily quantifiable measures of success, such as student belonging and participation in the immersive elements of the student experience.

    With the number of commuter students rising to reflect different learning patterns and pathways in a diverse student population, student living arrangements are also a major part of this puzzle. As the Secretary of State alluded to prior to the general election in an address to Universities UK, modern widening participation must reach out to more of those coming from nontraditional backgrounds, and those pursuing non-linear pathways through higher education.

    A wider view of widening participation means we need a more nuanced understanding of how access to university varies along socioeconomic, geographical and other demographic lines. As today’s report outlines, the difference in progression rates to higher education between students eligible for free school meals and their peers has widened to 20.8 per cent – the highest on record. Young people in London are significantly more likely to progress to higher education than their counterparts in the North East. The continuation gap between students from the most and least advantaged backgrounds now sits at 9.4 percentage points, having increased from 7.5 in 2016–17. As one of many charities operating in this space, we come face-to-face with the scale and scope of this disadvantage gap time and again. Equality of opportunity is still some way off.

    As well as this, some are schools struggling to do as much as others to support access to HE. Polling in our new report finds that 75 per cent of teachers in London expect at least half of their class to progress to higher education, compared to just 45 per cent in the North West and Yorkshire and the North East. Similarly, 75 per cent of teachers in Ofsted Outstanding schools thought that more than half their class would progress to HE, compared to just 35 per cent in schools rated as Requires Improvement or Inadequate.

    Although the Secretary of State said in a letter to heads of institution in November 2024 that expanding access and improving outcomes for disadvantaged students was her top reform priority in HE, the long list of challenges facing this government poses the risk that widening participation becomes a footnote to the geopolitical crisis.

    What we’re doing

    Despite the difficult environment facing both universities and the government, we think this agenda is too important to be put on the back burner. We hope our inquiry will help to establish new collective goals for widening participation and student success for the years ahead.

    The current moment provides a significant opportunity to interrogate the ways in which access and participation, student finance, student experience on campus, careers guidance, and student belonging intersect. It is in the context of this opportunity that the UPP Foundation, supported by Public First, is launching this inquiry, which aims to establish a new mission for widening participation.

    Following the introductory paper, we will publish two investigations, the first focusing on the persistent widening participation problems latent in “cold spot” areas of England, and the second exploring how the university experience differs based on students’ living arrangements and economic backgrounds, with poorer students often receiving a secondary experience that contributes to lower continuation and completion rates. Cumulatively, they will shed light on what meaningful widening participation really looks like to those who need it most, and what levers can be pulled to realise this vision.

    This inquiry comes at a crucial moment. We want to help the sector, the Office for Students and the government by setting out a series of evidence-based goals, recommendations and policies which could help make the broader vision a reality, while recognising “the art of the possible” in an era of fiscal restraint. Through these recommendations we hope to see the rhetoric of the opportunity mission and the Secretary of State start to become reality.

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  • Diversifying medicine by widening participation

    Diversifying medicine by widening participation

    Medicine is an elite profession, traditionally dominated by white, male, middle- or upper-class people, frequently from medical families.

    In 2014, the Medical Schools Council (MSC) created a Selection Alliance (SA), and published Selecting for Excellence (SfE), to address inequities in access to medical degrees in the UK for those from “widening participation” backgrounds.

    Fostering Potential: 10 years on from Selecting for Excellence , published in December of 2024, reports on progress made, with welcome achievements that are testament to the commitment of the community. The report rightly notes that focus on widening access has meant support for diverse students once they commence studies has been neglected.

    Recently, medical student activism – #LiveableNHSBursary , and #FixOurFunding – have highlighted the peculiar funding situation medical students find themselves in , and the financial pressures they experience during their studies.

    Fostering Potential asserts that WP needs to be reconceptualised away from a deficit framing of individuals as lacking ambition or aptitude to excel, to understanding lack of participation as the product of systemic and institutional failures around inclusion. For me, one of the main barriers to success for students from a disadvantaged socio-economic background studying medicine is the degree was designed and developed for a financially comfortable student. Its current structure excludes students from diverse backgrounds, and part of this is financial.

    The earnings gap

    One might argue that the financial hardship experienced by student medics is the temporary cost of what will become a lucrative career. However, once qualified, doctors from a lower socio-economic background will experience an average class pay gap of £3,640. This means their degree is both harder won and less remunerative.

    Current research and initiatives on financial barriers to success mostly treat money as a discernible object that can be quantified. It is a thing we either have enough of, or not; something we earn for ourselves as individuals. Hence proposed solutions tend to focus on maximising individual students’ abilities to earn alongside studies, while recognising that lack of time due to part-time work or caring responsibilities means some students cannot take advantage of extracurricular career development opportunities.

    I find this contradictory and suggest it misses a key point – money is also a relationship; it shapes our experiences of the world far beyond how much we have. It is a condition of success, not a result of it. Developing support for a student from a financially disadvantaged background should be informed by research that explicates how poverty impacts students’ opportunities to learn and exploit the advantages higher education allegedly offers.

    A student’s-eye-view

    I lead a project at Lancaster Medical School called Medicine Success, providing funds to mitigate the hidden costs of a medical degree for students from diverse backgrounds – purchasing a stethoscope, professional attire and funding the compulsory elective.

    Five years of project evaluation data reveal much about the role money plays in students’ sense of belonging and success. A student’s-eye-view of the degree reveals how unexpected its hidden costs are, how difficult it is to cover the cost of living and studying without financial support, and how choices about career development are constrained by cost. Further, the data shows students with scarce resources are keenly aware of how wealth is a vector of exclusion and inequity shaping their experience of the degree differently to their wealthier peers:

    Receiving these funds made a massive difference as it took me by surprise how much of a financial burden studying at university was. It seems that every aspect of it requires you to spend money that you don’t have and I feel at times it’s not all inclusive (2nd year, 2024)

    Their evaluations of the funding show that money transforms our lived experience of the world, and in turn, shapes our thoughts and feelings. They explain how scarcity can impact mental health and mental bandwidth, and the funding alleviates financial anxiety and paid-work commitments so they may focus on their studies.

    But it means more than just being able to afford essentials, it means being able to participate equally and with pride in their degree in comparison to their wealthier peers. This directly impacts self-esteem and addresses feelings of unworthiness or lack of belonging.

    A good example of this is the professional attire fund:

    I know professional attire might not seem serious but not having the right attire when it’s necessary leads me to overthink about how I’m dressed and feeling insecure during sessions. It’s often to the point where instead of focusing on learning I can’t help but to think about my appearance. (1st year, 2020)

    It is well-established that class can be read through a multitude of symbols. Respondents describe how their “lower” social status feels revealed through clothing, making them feel insecure in the learning environment. Students relate having their cheap and tired-looking clothes pointed out to them by peers, others worried about wearing the same outfit every day and what that said about their finances, while some feel that their patients have less respect for their opinion when they don’t present well-dressed. Meanwhile, ill-fitting clothing and shoes also interfere with the ability to focus on studies, causing pain and making long shifts additionally exhausting.

    Widening participation initiatives that focus on belonging from a social, cultural or academic skills perspective miss this crucial element – money. One student articulates a point made repeatedly by many of their peers:

    Funds like these make students like myself feel more heard and seen and gives us the opportunity to come from a lower socio-economic background and not feel as if we don’t belong here simply due to lack of finance. It gives us the confidence and the ability to work hard for what we want as we know there is always support available for students like us. (1st year, 2022)

    Recipients of Medicine Success funding attest that financial support levels the playing field with their more privileged peers in numerous, significant, and yet, subtle ways. Providing financial support is essential to make the learning environment, social activities, and career development accessible to students from all backgrounds. Belonging is in part financial; you can’t participate fully without money.

    Wider Context

    Recent reports show that the government is making a loss on student loans due to higher interest rates . This means private lending institutions are making a profit from the scheme funded by tax-payers and graduate repayments. In Why We Can’t Afford the Rich, Andrew Sayer explains that our current political system “supports rentier interests, particularly by making the 99 per cent indebted to the 1 per cent” , in which wealthy people are less likely to earn money through paid work, but accrue wealth through financial activities. The student loans scheme is one example.

    Higher education is presented as a means of social mobility, while extracting wealth into a financial sector that shores up its and its investors power. It does so by making already poor people pay to access education but without the conditions to participate fully. The promise of breaking the cycle of poverty with a university degree is so powerful that it deflects attention from what is really happening, despite extensive evidence that education has yet to prove itself as a solution to class inequalities. For these reasons, even with WP policies, HE has financial injustice embedded within it, resulting in deleterious effects on students’ mental health, degree experiences and outcomes.

    I see this as an example of “financial trauma,” defined by Chloe McKenzie as “the cumulative effect of being required to experience economic violence, financial abuse, financial shaming, and/or (chronic) financial stress to attain or sustain material safety”.

    Social mobility is a problematic term; it requires individual people to increase their position in an established hierarchy that is itself integral to maintaining socioeconomic inequality. This is why I welcome the MSC’s push to reconceptualise improving participation as a systemic issue, not one focussed on changing individuals to fit into the status quo. At the same time, we must apply this thinking to financial barriers to success, by recognising that money is far from a private issue but a matter of justice.

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  • Five keys to success in Evaluation Capacity Building for widening participation

    Five keys to success in Evaluation Capacity Building for widening participation

    Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate is a mantra that those engaged in widening participation in recent years will be all too familiar with.

    Over the past decade and particularly in the latest round of Access and Participation Plans (APP), the importance of evaluation and evidencing best practice have risen up the agenda, becoming integral parts of the intervention strategies that institutions are committing to in order to address inequality.

    This new focus on evaluation raises fundamental questions about the sector’s capacity to sustainably deliver high-quality, rigorous and appropriate evaluations, particularly given its other regulatory and assessment demands (e.g. REF, TEF, KEF etc.).

    For many, the more exacting standards of evidence have triggered a scramble to deliver evaluation projects, often facilitated by external organisations, consultancies and experts, often at considerable expense, to deliver what the Office for Students’ (OfS) guidance has defined as Type 2 or 3 evidence (capable of correlative or causal inference).

    The need to demonstrate impact is one we can all agree is worthy, given the importance of addressing the deep rooted and pervasive inequalities baked into the UK HE sector. It is therefore crucial that the resources available are deployed wisely and equitably.

    In the rush for higher standards, it is easy to be lured in by “success” and forget the steps necessary to embed evaluation in institutions, ensuring a plurality of voices can contribute to the conversation, leading to a wider shift in culture and practice.

    We risk, in only listening to those well placed to deliver large-scale evaluation projects and communicate the findings loudest, of overlooking a huge amount of impactful and important work.

    Feeling a part of it

    There is no quick fix. The answer lies in the sustained work of embedding evaluative practice and culture within institutions, and across teams and individuals – a culture that imbues values of learning, growth and reflection over and above accountability and league tables.

    Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB) offers a model or approach to help address these ongoing challenges. It has a rich associated literature, which for brevity’s sake we will not delve into here.

    In essence, it describes the process of improving the ability of organisations to do and use evaluation, through supporting individuals, teams and decision makers to prioritise evaluation in planning and strategy and invest time and resources into improving knowledge and competency in this area.

    The following “keys to success” are the product of what we learned while applying this approach across widening participation and student success initiatives at Lancaster University.

    Identify why

    We could not have garnered the interest of those we worked with without having a clear idea of the reasons we were taking the approach we did. Critically, this has to work both ways: “why should you bother evaluating?” and “why are we trying to build evaluation capacity?”

    Unhelpfully, evaluation has a bad reputation.

    It is very often seen by those tasked to undertake it as an imposition, driven by external agendas and accountability mandates – not helped by the jargon laden and technical nature of the discipline.

    If you don’t take the time to identify and communicate your motivations for taking this approach, you risk falling at the first hurdle. People will be hesitant to invest their time in attending your training, understanding the challenging concepts and investing their limited resources into evaluation, unless they have a good reason to do so.

    “Because I told you so” does not amount to a very convincing reason either. When identifying “why”, it is best you do so collaboratively and consider the specific needs, values and aspirations of those you are working with. To those ends, you might want to consider developing a Theory of Change for your own ECB initiative.

    Consider the context

    When developing resources or a series of interventions to support ECB at your institution, you should at all times consider the specific context in which you find yourself. There are many models, methods and resources available in the evaluation space, including those provided by organisations such as TASO, the UK Evaluation Society (UKES) or the Global Evaluation Initiative (BetterEvaluation.org), not to mention the vast literature on evaluation methods and methodologies. The possibilities are both endless and potentially overwhelming.

    To help navigate this abundance, you should use the institutional context in which you are intending to deliver ECB as your guide. For whom are you developing the resources? What are their needs? What is appropriate? What is feasible? How much time, money and expertise does this require? Who is the audience for the evaluation? Why are they choosing to evaluate their work at this time and in this way?

    In answering these and other similar questions, the “why” you identified above, will be particularly helpful. Ensuring the resources and training you provide are suitable and accessible is not easy, so don’t be perturbed if you get it wrong. The key is to be reflective and seek feedback from those you are working with.

    Surround yourself with researchers, educationalists and practitioners

    Doing and using evaluation are highly prized skills that require specific knowledge and expertise. The same applies to developing training and educational resources to support effective learning and development outcomes.

    Evaluation is difficult enough for specialists to get their heads around. Imagine how it must feel for those for whom this is not an area of expertise, nor even a primary area of responsibility. Too often the training and support available assumes high levels of knowledge and does not take the time to explain its terms.

    How do we expect someone to understand the difference between correlative and causal evidence of impact, if we haven’t explained what we mean by evaluation, evidence or impact, not to mention correlation or causation? How do we expect people to implement an experimental evaluation design, if we haven’t explained what an evaluation design is, how you might implement it or how “experimental” differs from other kinds of design and when it is or isn’t appropriate?

    So, surround yourself with researchers, educators and practitioners who have a deep understanding of their respective domains and can help you to develop accessible and appropriate resources.

    Create outlets for evaluation insight

    Publishing findings can be daunting, time-consuming and risky. For this reason, it’s a good idea to create more localised outlets for the evaluation insights being generated by the ECB work you’ve been doing. This will allow the opportunity to hone presentations, interrogate findings and refine language in a more forgiving and collaborative space.

    At Lancaster University, we launched our Social Mobility Symposium in September 2023 with this purpose in mind. It provided a space for colleagues from across the University engaged in widening participation initiatives and with interests in wider issues of social mobility and inequality to come together and share the findings they generated through evaluation and research.

    As the title suggests, the event was not purely about evaluation, which helped to engage diverse audiences with the insights arising from our capacity building work. “Evaluation by stealth,” or couching evaluative insights in discussions of subjects that have wider appeal, can be an effective way of communicating your findings. It also encourages those who have conducted the evaluations to present their results in an accessible and applied manner.

    Establish leadership buy in

    Finally, if you are planning to explore ECB as an approach to embedding and nurturing evaluation at an institutional level (i.e. beyond the level of individual interventions), then it is critical to have the buy in of senior managers, leaders and decision makers.

    Part of the why for the teams you are working with will no doubt include some approximation of the following: that your efforts will be recognised, the insights generated will inform decision making, the analyses you do will make a difference, and will be shared widely to support learning and sharing of best practice.

    As someone who is supporting capacity building endeavours you might not be able to guarantee these objectives. It is important therefore to focus equal attention on building the evaluation capacity and literacy of those who can.

    This can be challenging and difficult to control for. It depends on, among other things: the established culture and personnel in leadership positions, their receptiveness to new ideas, the flexibility and courage they have to explore new ways of doing things, and the capacity of the institution to utilise the insights generated through more diverse evaluative practices. The rewards are potentially significant, both in supporting the institution to continuously improve and meet its ongoing regulatory requirements.

    There is great potential in the field of evaluation to empower and elevate voices that are sometimes overlooked, but there is an equal and opposite risk of disempowerment and exclusion. Reductive models of evaluation, preferencing certain methods over others, risk impoverishing our understanding of the world around us and the impact we are having. It is crucial to have at our disposal a repertoire of approaches that are appropriate to the situation at hand and that fosters learning as well as value assessment.

    Done well, ECB provides a means of enriching the narrative in widening participation, as well as many other areas, though it requires a coherent institutional and sectoral approach to be truly successful.

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  • Is going to university still worth it? A widening participation student’s view

    Is going to university still worth it? A widening participation student’s view

    By David Lam, Activities Officer at the Students’ Union Bath.

    As a child, I always envisioned a very traditional educational journey. I would work my way through high school, do my A levels and then end up at a good university, graduating into a well-paid job. I think this is the journey most undertake or are pointed towards as we were told that university students almost always earn more than those without one. It’s a no-brainer, right?

    However, there have been recent conversations about the value of going to university and getting a degree. Being a student is tough right now, because:

    Despite these challenges, record numbers of students from TUNDRA 1 (lowest participation) backgrounds have made it to university. A remarkable stat! But why has this happened? I believe university opens so many more opportunities for you besides a good education and, for this reason, people would prefer to earn and learn rather than not doing it at all.

    Going to university allows you to access a whole load of new experiences through societies and sports clubs at a relatively low cost and without much commitment. At Bath, there are over 200 groups that you can join, ranging from common interests like football and board games to more niche ones like sailing and gliding. I am sure there are equally wide offers at other universities. Having gone to a state school, I never had the opportunity to try all these things while others from more privileged backgrounds did. 

    Studying at Bath meant I had access to a wide range of placements for my year in industry. Without the wonderful placement team showing me all the world had to offer, I would not have known where to start, nor would I have ever considered doing a placement.  I had always seen movies that involved people going for the best year of their life abroad in a sunny place, making friends for life and being temporarily free from studying. I decided I wanted that experience too, but then the Covid-19 Pandemic hit, meaning my opportunities suddenly shrank. Despite the setback of a global pandemic, I eventually found an opportunity and I ended up working in Madrid as a Physical Education (PE) teacher in an international school. It was the best year of my life, living the dream I’d seen on TV, thanks to my university’s placement team’s support.

    Attending university exposes you to people from diverse backgrounds. Coming from a small town in the Midlands, predominantly made up of white British residents, I was one of only three kids of colour in my entire primary school. So arriving in Bath and encountering people who looked like me was a strikingly different experience. Some of my closest friends come from all over the world and, yes, eventually when we all leave Bath, I will be visiting them at some point! The chances of me making such friendships would have been minimal had I stayed in my little town and I would have nowhere near as enlightened an understanding of other cultures as I have now.

    University is often the first real taste of freedom for many, marking the transition from life at home to living independently. You are no longer surrounded by an endless supply of clean clothes or home-cooked meals; instead, you are managing your own routine and life, all within the relatively safe university environment. This shift into the big wide world fosters resilience and builds people skills. You will inevitably encounter challenges, like that one housemate who never does their dishes. But part of the university experience is learning to handle these issues yourself, having the tough conversations and solving problems independently rather than relying on someone else to step in. Along the way, you will meet both amazing people and those who are not so great. While no degree teaches you how to interact with others, living with a diverse group of people forces you to learn those essential skills.

    For these reasons, I still believe there is value in going to university. While not everyone’s experience is the same, the underlying benefits remain. The university experience represents a beacon of opportunity and opens so many doors. It leads to things you would have never imagined doing, like living in another country for a whole year or writing a blog for a higher education think tank. Seeing the Office for Students turn its attention to the wider student experience, rather than exclusively to education, is welcome. I believe more places should be taking this holistic view and I look forward to seeing what their new strategy comes out with it.

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  • Widening access needs more flexibility

    Widening access needs more flexibility

    It has been reported that decision to lower the fee cap on foundation year fees may lead some providers reluctantly to withdraw from that provision, while others will continue to offer those courses at a loss.

    In November, the Office for Students’ Director for Fair Access and Participation announced that the access mission would renew its focus upon “ensuring universities and colleges can play their part in giving all aspiring students the opportunity to gain the knowledge, skills and experiences they need to be confident in the choices they make on their pathway to achieving their aspirations, at multiple points along their journey”.

    There is clearly a strong appetite among providers, policymakers and regulators to enhance efforts to promote access in line with the Secretary of State’s emphasis on the importance of widening participation as an instrument of social mobility.

    During 2024, we at QAA published a range of resources and policy papers supporting this access agenda, including work on degree apprenticeships, lifelong learning, awarding gaps and credit transfer. We also in 2024 celebrated the registration of the millionth student onto an Access to Higher Education Diploma (AHE) course since we started managing the scheme for the recognition and quality assurance of this provision in 1997.

    All about access

    This qualification is widely recognised in universities’ entry criteria as an alternative to more traditional Level 3 qualifications such as A Levels and BTECs. It is designed to cater for learners from diverse educational and socioeconomic backgrounds and to offer degrees of flexibility to suit the lifestyles of these returners to learning – who often devote their time and energies to family and work commitments on top of their studies.

    AHE provision makes a significant contribution to widening participation. Each year around five per cent of all UCAS applications come from AHE students. More than 36,000 students are currently registered on AHE courses.

    The latest figures show that 19,320 AHE students were accepted for entry into higher education in 2023. Nearly a quarter of those progressed to nursing and midwifery courses, and another 23 per cent to programmes in health and social care.

    Twenty-four per cent of 2023’s cohort of AHE students entering higher education came from areas of disadvantage – compared with only 11 per cent of students with other Level 3 qualifications entering HE. Fifty-two per cent of that Access cohort entering HE were over 25 years old, compared with just 11 per cent of students with other Level 3 qualifications. These people have overcome barriers to participation in practice and in droves.

    Understanding the barriers

    We recently conducted a survey of more than 700 Access students. We asked what barriers they had perceived when considering applying for their course. Our research revealed their concerns had often focused on the amount of time they would need to devote to their studies. Those aged 20-34 identified the cost of living as having been a key consideration, while those aged over 35 were more worried about the impact their studies would have on their families and their family lives.

    New research conducted by Laser Learning Awards has found that 48.3 per cent of 116 of their own AHE students surveyed saw family commitments as a barrier to learning, and 31.3 per cent identified carer responsibilities – while 63.2 per cent flagged work scheduling issues.

    These findings chimed with a recent Open University study which found that, although nearly two-thirds of mothers aspire to retrain for new careers, anxieties about money, time and parental responsibilities tend to hold them back. As about three-quarters of AHE students are female, it seems likely that they experience similar barriers.

    Flexibility is key

    It is increasingly vital to address these barriers to widening participation: not simply by offering access routes but by ensuring that those routes are sufficiently flexible to be viable for aspiring learners. These flexibilities may, for example, take place through varying modes, paces and dates of delivery.

    The Covid-19 crisis taught providers across the tertiary sector ways to deliver programmes online. Now, online engagement can free learners with busy schedules and finite resources from time-constraints and from the costs of travel. Remote and hybrid study modes have proven increasingly popular with AHE students.

    Part-time study can also help to overcome barriers facing non-traditional learners. In 2018-19, only 16 per cent of AHE students were studying part-time. But in the three years following the 2020 lockdown the proportion of part-timers increased from less than a third to more than half of all AHE learners.

    During 2023-24, 54 per cent of AHE students paced their learning over more than a single academic year, often spreading their studies over about 18 months. The proportion of part-time Access learners peaked at this point – right at the height of the cost-of-living crisis, a period during which learners often needed to increase their working hours and to limit their childcare costs. This current academic year, with inflationary pressures somewhat diminished, our proportion of part-time learners has settled at 42 per cent – the same level as two years ago – and more than two-and-a-half times what it was six years ago.

    AHE providers have found value in offering January start-dates, affording part-time learners the opportunity to synchronize with traditional autumn starts as they progress into higher education. Of approximately 1,300 AHE courses running this year, 180 are currently open to new registrations commencing in early 2025.

    As we continue to learn the value of flexibilities in overcoming the barriers to widening participation, we hope such lessons will help to inform the development of policies and strategies designed to promote higher education’s value as a key driver of social mobility and to transform learners’ lives.

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  • Widening participation students have much to teach us

    Widening participation students have much to teach us

    When co-creating with under-represented groups, the most important element for success is a relational approach.

    We need to embody core values – such as respect, inclusivity, fairness and consideration – in order to ensure that collaborators have a safe space which allows them to thrive.

    Care experienced students have support needs which are often not well understood by the teams who are in place to help. By co-creating resources with local college students who have experience of the care system, we were able to help to provide our tutors with guidance to help them in their support role.

    As the number of young people in care in the UK increases and universities face regulatory pressure to enable access and participation in higher education, we will see more students with care experience entering higher education.

    So it is vital that universities empower them to overcome the obstacles they have already faced and help them achieve their best outcomes.

    Myths and realities

    Although it is a myth that care-experienced young people are more likely to end up in prison than in university, the reality is still that the outcomes for care experienced young people are not good.

    The Care Leavers Association produced a report in 2015 advising that while children in care and care leavers account for less than 1 per cent of the population, over 25 per cent of the adult prison population has previously been in care.

    This, when contrasted with data from the Office for Students, which tells us that in 2018-19 only 13 per cent of pupils who were looked after for 12 months or more, entered higher education compared to 43 per cent of all other pupils, is a glaring call to action.

    Our local authority, Devon, has pledged to add care experience as a protected characteristic under the Equality Act, as recommended by an independent review into children’s social care. This should go some way to ensuring that young people with care experience are protected from discrimination.

    Care experience as expertise

    Our recent initiative focused on ways of working with care-experienced young people, not just as participants but as expert colleagues, whose insights and lived experiences would be integral to the project’s success.

    The relational approach that informed our planning exceeded our hopes, allowing us to create a truly collaborative environment where both the young people and our academic community benefited profoundly and meaningfully.

    The local authority approached the university about work experience opportunities, and our team of two set about designing a week-long suite of mutually beneficial skills-shares and development opportunities. The care experienced individuals who joined us were invited as experts.

    They were studying at local colleges, but have considered university in the future. At the time of the work experience week they were aged 18 – 19. We had not set any parameters for the local authority, our intention being to work with individuals who wanted to take up our offer. These young adults brought invaluable perspectives that informed the creation of resources to improve the support offered to care-experienced students.

    Their contributions were not just helpful—they were essential, producing outcomes that would have been impossible without their input. This was not a one-sided effort but a partnership in which their voices were central to the development process.

    The week in motion

    The week was carefully designed to be balanced, trauma-informed, and safe. It wasn’t about providing generic work experience but about creating a bespoke environment where each young person could belong, see and feel that they mattered, and then identify and pursue their own developmental goals with confidence.

    The rooms, resources, colleagues, and plans were all designed to facilitate a relaxed and respectful collegiate atmosphere.

    We began with talk (and coffee): co-creating and sharing a space to talk and to share experiences, expertise and aspirations.

    The subsequent self-assessment exercises, such as SWOT analyses and personal development plans, allowed the care experienced people to reflect from a place of safety and to articulate their strengths, areas for growth, and personal objectives for the week and beyond.

    Mutual benefits

    This self-directed approach ensured that they were not only contributing to the university’s resources but also advancing their own skills and confidence. The care experienced people became educators, delivering presentations and engaging in microteaching sessions for staff. These opportunities allowed for the young people to refine their communication skills, build their confidence, and further establish themselves as knowledgeable contributors.

    Throughout the week, we prioritised creating a safe and supportive environment. Trust was foundational to the initiative, enabling the young people to fully engage and showcase their expertise and talents.

    We deliberately involved colleagues from various departments and used different spaces across the campus, which helped to familiarise the young people with the university setting and adding to their cultural capital. We approached colleagues who shared our approach towards fully inclusive and respectful collaboration to run workshops and facilitate ideas sharing. This relational pedagogy – centred on trust, respect, and mutual learning – allowed for a rich exchange of knowledge and skills.

    The resources produced during this week were nothing short of exceptional. Covering topics such as finance for care-experienced students, trauma-informed tutoring, and the traits of a supportive tutor, these materials are now invaluable assets for our Academic Personal Tutors.

    Such resources are polished, professional, and most importantly, deeply rooted in the lived experiences of care-experienced individuals. The impact of these resources will be felt across the university, enhancing the support we provide to care-experienced students in a way that truly reflects their needs.

    The week culminated in a resource-showcase, which was attended by academics and professional services colleagues from across the university, as well as external stakeholders.

    This was a special moment, for all involved: either observing or being our colleagues-for-the-week, mingling at the showcase tables to talk about their design rationale and why supporting the care leaver agenda is so important. It was an event that helped to highlight to the young people the quality and significance of the resources that they had developed.

    Success

    The feedback that we received from the young people matched our aspirations for the week: they felt supported, empowered, efficacious.

    The success of this initiative has inspired us to expand the model. We plan to repeat the experience with other care-experienced young people and extend it to work alongside other underrepresented groups.

    Our goal is not only to support those already within our institution, but also to demonstrate that higher education is a welcoming and inclusive space for everyone. By continuing to adopt a relational approach that values the contributions of all students as expert colleagues, we can create a more equitable and supportive academic environment.

    This initiative was a sobering reminder that the messages that society tells young people about their potential become their inner voice.

    It was also testament to the power of collaboration, mutual respect, and the genuine belief that every student, regardless of their background, has the potential to belong in, and contribute to, the academic community. We must remember that while we work to support widening participation students, they also have much to teach us.

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