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A one-day conference held on 19 September 2001

Opening speeches of the keynote speaker Bahram Bekhradnia and members of the panel. We  also include information about the workshop presentations and contact e-mail addresses.

Keynote Speech by Bahram Bekhradnia, Director of Policy, HEFCE

I would like to begin by summarising my talk.  I want to do this because having a read through what I propose to say, I am aware that it can easily be misinterpreted. So first, let me make it quite clear.  I am totally committed to widening participation.  HEFCE has been at the forefront of attempts to widen participation among underrepresented groups, and no one in HEFCE has been more committed than I.  But I am going to describe the world as it is.  And it is quite clear, particularly from work we have recently done in HEFCE, that widening participation will be far more complex than we might previously have thought.  And it also seems as though to some extent we and others have been aiming at the wrong targets.  We need to refocus our efforts.  We will need to look at different approaches than those we have adopted in the past, and in particular we will need to establish more active relationships with schools.  We will have to be rather modest in thinking about the role that higher education can play or at least can play alone, and think creatively about the most productive way we can engage with schools.

The Government has stated, as one of the absolutely central tenets of their education policy, that they wish to see 50% of those under 30 having experience of higher education.  This is something which we can applaud.  I’m in no doubt of your commitment to widening participation — you wouldn’t be here otherwise.  And, as I have said, HEFCE is no less committed.  I’m not going to list the measures we have taken to try and stimulate wider participation in higher education — there is no time for that and I imagine you will be familiar with them.  What I’m going to do today is to share with you some of the very real difficulties we will face in achieving this.  It is probably true to say that some of our actions have been, as I have said,  aiming at the wrong targets — perhaps rather secondary targets — without really making inroads where it most matters.

The other thing I’m not going to do is to argue in favour of widening participation.  The benefits of HE are well enough documented.  Economic benefits have long been known — the much higher financial rewards which come from attending higher education have been well documented.  And more recently we have published research which shows a host of non-economic benefits as well, ranging from better health to more active citizenship.  The argument is not self-evident and has to be put, but today is not the time or the place.  I take that for granted, but we can discuss that in the panel discussion if you like. 

And related to this, by the way, is the question of the student’s own contribution to HE.  For the very reason that widening participation is essential to further social justice – to spread widely the very real benefits which HE brings – I believe that a degree of student contribution – probably more than at present – is good for widening participation.  My reasoning is this.  The Government has made it quite clear that the amount it is prepared to invest in HE is limited. Education, Education, Education may be, but the depth of its pocket is limited, and its priorities for increased public investment lie elsewhere – in schools, pre school etc.  Quite rightly in my view.  So if the number of HE places is not to be cut back – and the benefits not shared – there will have to be a greater contribution from the beneficiaries.   Now the Government will have to be careful – more careful than so far, I suspect.  Although there is no evidence so far that the new student finance arrangements have had a deterrent influence on participation, there is no evidence that they have not.  It is still too early for definite answers.  But we do know from research that the poorest sections of society are most likely to be influenced by the perceived level of debt.  This is largely a matter of presentation and perception, but as I said the Government needs to take care if it is not to do damage.

In order to make good policy for widening participation for the future, we ought to begin by looking at the past.  Recent experience has not been reassuring.  The Enormous and rapid increase in student numbers that took place during the late 1980s and early 1990s came to an abrupt stop, and has not picked up again.  The reason it came to stop was not because of the withdrawal of government funding or because of the unavailability of places.  Nor was it because of changes to student financing arrangements.  It has come about because demand from students has dried up.  Rather demand has not dried up, but the increasing demand which we experienced early in the last decade has stopped.  [slide]This chart shows the increasing numbers up to 1994, and [slide] this shows quite dramatically how that increase just stopped and numbers have more or less levelled off since.  [slide] And here is a table showing what happened to the participation rate of young people.  It doubled in a very small number of years, and over the last decade or so it has stagnated.  In order to form a judgment about prospects for growth in the future, it’s a good idea to try to understand the dynamics of this stop start growth in the past

[slide] What caused the growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s?  Here is a chart shows that the growth in student numbers in the past followed directly on from the growth in the number of pupils staying on in schools at 16 plus.  That began to increase dramatically in 1987.  And the growth continued for 5 years.  This graph shows how this increase was followed a couple of years later by students coming into higher education.  When the growth in schools staying on came to an end, so too did growth in higher education a couple of years later.  No surprises there, perhaps, but it shows we have to be extremely realistic about the ability of HE alone to increase numbers.  If the groundwork has not been laid the school by school pupils staying on, our prospects are not great.

There’s no time to speculate here about what led to the increase in staying on at school in the late 1980s, but it is interesting to note that it coincided almost exactly with the introduction of GCSEs, one of whose main purposes, of course, was to increase schools staying on.

[slide] At the same time, however, there was a decisive change in the nature of the employment market, with a large and structural shift towards highly skilled jobs, and a reduction in the number of unskilled jobs.  It is arguable whether the introduction of GCSEs by themselves would have led to such an increase in schools staying on, if there had not in parallel been such a structural change in the employment market, providing pupils with an added incentive to stay on at school.  The relevance of this is that there has been no equivalent development since that time.  Although the structure of the employment market has continued to change in favour of highly qualified jobs, the pace of change has been much slower than previously; and until the introduction of curriculum 2000, there was no significant change at school level equivalent to the introduction of GCSEs.  It could be that the introduction of curriculum 2000 may encourage more students to stay on after GCSEs[we can, perhaps, return to this].

[slide] But it is not just staying on which leads to HE participation.  If I could combine this with the earlier slide, you would see that it is A level participation which has the strongest relationship with HE participation, not surprisingly.  There is significant dropout after GCSEs, and this provides one ready source of additional demand for higher education, if these pupils can be persuaded to take level 3 examinations.  At present they do not do so.  [Slide] One interesting question, which may provide a clue to wider participation is why that should be?  Who are these pupils?  What will it take to persuade them to stay on in school?  What part can HEIs play in this?  One disappointing thing to note from the previous slide is the completely flat take up of GNVQ.  The flatness of A level take up is not surprising, perhaps, though disappointing, in view of the Dearing Review’s assertion that a maximum of only about one third of pupils would  take that exam.  But he believed that progress towards the Government’s level 3 target would be made by pupils taking other level 3 qualifications in increasing numbers.  So far they have failed to do so.

So the prospects for growth in the number of young students does not look too healthy, without significant change in schools.  OK, you might say.  But what about mature students?  Do they provide the prospect of growth?  After all, is widening participation not precisely about bringing more mature students into HE?  Well, I think the answer to those two questions is ‘probably not’ and ‘up to a point’.

[slide] I’m afraid that the story with mature students is not very much more encouraging than with younger student.  You will see from these charts that their numbers also increased rapidly in the late 1980s and early 1990s, [slide] since when there has been virtually no growth at all.  One can speculate about the reasons, but one reason is clearly to do with the demographics of mature students.  The pool of students prepared for HE who do not go in to higher education has greatly diminished with the increasing number of students going to higher education at a younger age.  Virtually 100 percent of those who take A level now go to higher education, and so that population is both reduced, and it is saturated:  both the population of those who have not been to higher education has reduced, and there is virtually nobody in the remaining population who has A-levels.  I am not of course saying that A levels are the only route to higher education, but there was such group of people available in the past, and they do not exist now.

Now we come to a contentious issue.  What do I mean by mature people ready and prepared for higher education?  Does widening participation not take as an axiom of faith that we should throw open the doors of universities to everyone?  No, I don’t think so.  Higher education is by definition difficult and we have to ensure that those that come into higher education are intellectually prepared for rigorous study at a high level.  We are doing no favours to students if we allow them to higher education inadequately prepared or intellectually overstretched by the studies which they will have to undertake.  [slide] This chart illustrates one dimension of the problem, and is particularly important.  Student dropout.  It shows that there is almost a linear relationship between dropout and previous educational attainment.  This graph is based on A level points scores alone.  I have to tell you that exactly the same pattern continues with non-A level qualifications. [slide]   Students who come from access courses are more than twice as likely to drop out after the first year than most young students — and indeed 30 percent more likely to drop out than mature students with A-levels.  And mature students with A-levels are on average more than 50% more likely to drop out than young students with A-levels.  This is where I am in danger of being misinterpreted.  This is certainly not an argument against admitting mature students and in doing whatever we can to ensure that as many mature students as possible are enabled to participate in higher education.  The higher dropout rates are relative, and the majority still succeed.  We must not lose sight of that.  But what I am saying is first that the pool of potential mature students is not unlimited, and maybe even has diminished, and for good reasons; and second that students are far more likely to have a successful higher education experience if they have had a successful school experience. I am focusing rather on the question of success, and the flip side of that, which is student drop out, because we have increasingly come to regard that as an important dimension of access and participation.  In the past, we were focused very largely, if not exclusively, on bringing young people from underrepresented groups into higher education.  But our focus is rather more balanced now.  It is of course still very largely concerned with encouraging a wider group of students into higher education, but it now recognises that bringing them in is not sufficient — we have to ensure that they succeed.

What lessons should we draw from all this?  First, it is enormously important to widen the group of people benefiting from a successful higher education experience.  I have not argued that in this talk, but I take that as a given in this audience.  Not everybody believes this but the evidence is overwhelming, and we have the government on our side here. 

Second, we must of course continue to make efforts to identify and recruit people who have not succeeded at school who will benefit from higher education.  We must be imaginative in identifying who they are, and in setting in place the infrastructure — access courses for example — to enable this.  But we have to be realistic.  We will not make inroads on a large-scale if we wait till pupils have left school and concentrate our efforts there.

Third, success is as important an element in widening participation as bringing people in.  We have first to ensure that we do not bring people in with a false prospectus.  We’re doing nobody any favours if we bring people into higher education unless they have a reasonable prospect of success.  And we need to put in place measures within universities and colleges to make sure that once they are in higher education students have the best possible chance of succeeding.  We know that students with a poor previous educational experience are more likely not to succeed than those who have done well at school, and we need to ensure that universities and colleges have the infrastructure and the support arrangements to provide for these students.

Finally, and most important, if we are to make real inroads into the question of participation, we have to start young.  We have to ensure that pupils take GCSEs, stay on into the 6th form and take a level 3 qualification [ repeat slide].  This is a measure of the problem.  We have to identify the role that HE can most usefully play in furthering this.

There are lessons here for all of us. HEFCE needs to look carefully at the support that we are giving for widening participation and make adjustments.  For example we need to try to increase the funds we provide for universities to work co-operatively with FE colleges and schools to encourage people who might otherwise leave school at 16 to stay on and consider higher education.  We also need to be rather clearer that the funding premium which we provide through the funding method — the postcode premium — is not intended as an incentive to recruit underrepresented groups.  I doubt whether such an incentive is required and the problem anyway is not the reluctance of universities to recruit such students but the availability of such students able and willing to benefit from higher education.  This money is much better identified clearly as a recognition of the cost of providing the additional support etc which universities need to make to ensure that students with poor previous educational qualifications succeed.

I end as I began.  I hope that my message will not be misunderstood.  I think widening participation is probably the most important challenge we face today in HE.  Both to further social justice and because the country needs to increase the high level skills in the population.  But I also think we need to be more rigorous that we at any rate have been in the past, in identifying the problems and the most profitable solutions.

Please click here to see copy of all the slides produced for this lecture.
 

Maggie Woodrow of the European Access Network (EAN)

Whilst writing the report ‘From Elitism to Inclusion 2’ Maggie felt very encouraged by the fact that many universities (right across the sector) are “doing marvellous things”.

However she had three main points to raise. 

1.  There is not adequate funding for HEI’s.  5% is miserable, definitely not an incentive. Can we please see the money that the government promised!

2.  Student funding.  England is the only country in the UK which hasn’t had an independent inquiry into student funding.  We are burying our heads in the sand.  The reality is that students can’t afford it, NOT that they don’t understand the system or that it is too complicated. 

3.  She was extremely worried about what the government is doing about schools.  It is not putting money into schools which are poorest off but into schools which are benefiting the middle classes most.

The Government is proposing a similar kind of segregation which has shown to be disastrous in widening access in other countries, like Germany and the Netherlands.
 

Peter Scott, Vice-Chancellor of Kingston University

Peter began by stressing that his biography included on the conference notes did not mention his time spent at the University of Leeds where he spent time on major research into non-standard students' progress, and links between further and higher education. He made clear his opposition to tuition fees and said that he believed the end of 'free' higher education was bound to have a disincentive effect on the students HE most needed to attract to hit the 50% participation target - and, that even if students from poorer families did not to have to pay and the Government was making available bursaries and grants of various kinds, the effect would be to produce a 'benefits culture' - which itself acted as a disincentive to many potential students.

Kingston, in many people's perception, is a 'posh' area with the highest proportion of graduates per population, but that can make the job of widening participation more difficult as there are still people within the community that are excluded.

We live in the best of times and the worst of times. There is a lot of evidence of achievement - a mass HE system with 1.8 million students and if you look at some groups - women as opposed to men, and ethnic minorities - we've done rather well over the last 10 years.

However, despite the many programmes, widening participation is not seen as the central objective by many people in HE. League tables are part of the problem. Inside institutions they are an obsession. They do measure some good things, traditional attributes, doing well in the academic culture. 

We are now beginning to talk about 'high demand' universities, implying that some are NOT high demand. These are subtle codes but we all know what we are talking about because we belong to a class society. We have the funding system, the quality assurance system, and the research assessment system. These treat all universities in uniform ways so it's not surprising that universities respond in uniform ways - yet we respond from very different and unequal funding bases and I worry that those institutions that have done most to widen participation tend almost exclusively to be those least well funded.

Peter stated his concern about the performance-indicator culture because they are inherently conservative systems. Good at measuring in an apparently value-free way things as they are, but not good at projecting forward as they should be.

The government seems confused as to whether we are in the best or worst of times. There is strong government policy coming through in their schools policies and also apparent in their HE policies as well. The 'standards' agenda can be used to subvert some of the things we are trying to achieve. We should not simply provide access to people to HE if they are not going to succeed, but if they don't succeed we 
should ask what are our measures of success? British/English instincts tend to see the glass half empty rather than half full. There are people who haven't achieved the way that we ourselves may have achieved - but they have significant achievements in their own personal lives and we should find ways of recognising and celebrating those.

Penelope Griffin, University of Nottingham and member of the Russell Group Association for Widening Participation

Penelope spoke from her experience and knowledge of longer-term developments in Australian universities and her awareness of issues facing some research-led universities in England. She noted that she did not represent the Russell Group.

Penelope welcomed much of the HEFCE’s recent policy developments. Maintaining the diversity of the sector was important. In defining the approach to widening participation, it was important to recognise that it is a long-term process and includes both ‘soft’ issues, such as raising aspirations to university study in general, and ‘hard’ issues, such as increasing participation in competitive courses. Progress in the latter was being facilitated by strong, senior-level support from within institutions as well as clear support from the HEFCE. Funding for WP was generous by comparison with Australasian universities.

Essential to the progress of WP was the raising of attainment levels at secondary level nationally. University courses with high expectations needed well-prepared students. In addition, Penelope suggested that the admissions process, and particularly the role of factors other than examination grades, needed to be discussed more openly. 

Penelope reported that the University of Nottingham, as a research-led university, was devoting a significant part its budget to facilitating flexible admissions. 

Ross Newby of The Sutton Trust

Peter Lampl set up the Sutton Trust in 1997. He was shocked, on coming back to the UK after many years, at how poor opportunities were for bright children from non-privileged backgrounds.  In 1996 Peter approached Oxford with the idea of funding a summer school for students from state schools from which they had no, or very few applicants. The first one for 64 students was in July 1997. More than half applied to Oxford and 16 got in. We have since helped to establish summer schools at Cambridge, Bristol and Nottingham universities with 650 year 12 student places this year.  The Government funded Excellence Challenge summer schools – now reaching 6,000 inner city year 11 students at over 60 universities – have taken the idea on. In a further development this year we co-sponsored with the Government a summer school programme targeting students in colleges of further education, working with admissions officers at Bath, Derby, Imperial College, Lancaster and Surrey.

Do summer schools work?  The answer is an emphatic ‘yes’. The National Foundation for Educational Research evaluated the summer schools for us and found that one third of the students are made offers by the university where they went to the summer school.  Deeper statistical analysis shows that attending a summer school does what we hoped it would: it compensates for a student’s family educational inheritance (at least in terms of application and entry to university).

Summer schools are one-off. We also need a broader outreach – universities not waiting for students to come to them. American universities have many more recruitment officers going out to schools to persuade students to apply. We are funding a recruitment officer pilot at a consortium of Oxford colleges to encourage applications from FE students. Another approach, at the University of Edinburgh, has focussed first on access to Medicine and Law, where there is particular evidence of social imbalance. The University is working closely with the professional bodies to give students from non-privileged backgrounds exposure to the professions. If successful we think this has the potential to become a national programme.

Last year we published a report based on HEFCE statistics on access to the dozen or so universities that top the league tables. The report showed that Independent schools are significantly over-represented at those universities, even allowing for their better relative performance at A-level.  Similarly, those from the less affluent social classes are significantly under-represented. 

Each year there are over three thousand students from state schools in less affluent areas who achieve excellent A-level qualifications but who, for a variety of reasons, are not ending up at those universities which top the league tables. Of course, many other universities do much better in terms of attracting students from less affluent backgrounds.

Where there is imbalance it is due to 2 main factors: firstly too few suitably qualified less affluent students apply and secondly there are inadequacies in the admissions system.  The extra Government funding for access offers the chance to combat the first factor.

For the second we favour a post qualification admissions system. It would shift the balance of power if offers were based on actual rather than predicted results – universities would need to compete for good students who, by then, would know their position in the marketplace. This would be possible if proposals are accepted for assessment to be concentrated in the fifth term of a six-term school year. 

Conclusions

• We recognise the importance of all three elements of the widening participation effort: raising aspirations, broadening the pool of applicants and entrants and student retention. Raising the aspirations of all to attend the institution and course best able to match their abilities, interests and needs remains a particular focus for the Sutton Trust.

• We have seen the importance of research – monitoring, evaluating and publicising the initiatives we support. 

• Many in this audience have for years had programmes reaching out to less affluent students. But more of our universities could become more proactive and contact students directly rather than waiting for students to come to them. We would like to see a greater acceptance of risk-taking by institutions, trying new approaches to admissions and the curriculum to encourage wider access. Also a wish that institutions, with their different characters, should be respected for their different individual contributions to widening participation.

• Attitudes and expectations of students regarding university choices are formed early on in their career, and teachers and parents play a vital role in this. Hence schemes for younger children play an important part in increasing access. Separately we have asked NFER to research teacher attitudes to access – particularly those with particular responsibility for giving advice on tertiary choices.

• We have seen many out-of-school activities developed but the key target must be to improve provision during the mainstream curriculum.

Brooks Duke of the National Union of Students (NUS)

Brooks started by highlighting the project work that the NUS is involved with.  He leads a ‘partnership and progression’ project which aims to train university students to go back to schools and encourage leavers to enter post-16 education.  Its not just about challenging perceptions, cost issues of HE but also about breaking the vicious cycle of generation after generation of families opting out of HE for whatever 
reason.

We can talk about raising aspirations but the reality is that expansion on the cheap is not going to reach the governments ambitious target of 50% participation.  Not just about student support, there needs to be more money to HEI’s.

We need to consider how we fund FE as well as HE.  We need to make it easy for students to progress.  The system needs to be easier/simplier.

We need to move away from ‘A’ level traditional route.  What about the other experiences students can bring to HE.

Not a coincidence that since the abolition of up-front fees in Scotland, the Scottish intake is twice that of England.  It is not just students who think fees are wrong, those who have investigated up-front fees like Andrew Cubie in Scotland have identified it was the wrong move.  It has had a severe impact in terms of access into HE.

Importance of perceptions.  The reality is that many students are exempt from paying tuition fees but the reality is that many still think they have to make huge contributions.

We shouldn’t expect the bill to be met by individual students.

Perhaps the biggest mistake this government has made is abolishing student grants.  Pre-1997 average graduate debt was around £8-9000.  Now it’s £15,000.  No way to encourage those who have always opted out of HE.

Other considerations:

• Need to discuss students getting their results first and then applying to university.
• How distance learning and lifelong learning fits into this discussion.

Responsibility of Government and the business sector as well as students.

1) “Hands off until they have the skills to choose!” - the Recruitment versus  Widening Participation debate

This paper explored the tensions between recruitment and widening participation. Drawing on various case studies and theoretical models, it explored how young people make tentative progress towards becoming autonomous decision makers. It examined at what stage in the process of successful engagement with higher education, is a potential student in a position to make the choice of the right institution and course for them. It sought to relate these to the potential conflict between raising aspirations to higher education and direct institutional recruitment. It also explored how higher education can assist in developing the skills required to enable young people to confront University admissions systems with confidence. 

Gill Benton, (seconded from FE), Aim Higher Widening Participation Partnership, University of Liverpool, G.Benton@liv.ac.uk
Tricia Jenkins, Head of the Widening Participation Team, University of Liverpool,
tjenkins@liv.ac.uk
 

2) “Spend my summer studying maths? No thanks.”  Developing a successful maths summer school through HE/FE collaboration

Maths can be a barrier to educational and career progression. A qualification in the subject is a pre-requisite for entry to many higher education courses in the areas of sciences, engineering, technology, business, computing and some social sciences. For people who have had negative experiences of maths there need to be strong motivational factors to persuade them to return to study a subject associated with fear and failure. Success for such students will be determined, in part, by the design of the learning opportunity and the quality of the support available.

The Staffordshire Universities Maths Summer School (SUMSS) is a six-week intensive summer school held at university campuses in Staffordshire for under-represented and disadvantaged local adult students. The summer school provides the opportunity for students to gain a qualification equivalent in level and scope to GCSE mathematics, facilitating progression to further or higher education or to enhance employment opportunities. A collaborative approach, involving the two Staffordshire universities, local further education colleges, the careers service, Training & Enterprise Council and Information Advice & Guidance network, was used to develop the model.

This workshop examined the process of collaboration which has been fundamental to the development of the model and the success of the summer school. It examined the mechanisms used to attract students from the target groups. The support structures for these students - from initial enquiry, through the summer school, and on to progression - was discussed.

Joy Clews, Director of SUMSS, Staffordshire University, j.clews@staffs.ac.uk
 

3) An early start: Equipping children to become future lifelong learners

This paper drew on examples from current policy to highlight the ways in which children have been excluded from the lifelong learning debate. Children’s education has an increasing emphasis on resource-based learning, which requires them to use a range of resources to develop independent learning skills as well as to learn about particular subjects. However, children’s access to learning resources, and support in using them (in school, in the home and in the wider community) will impact considerably on their ability to carry out this work effectively. 

This paper used findings from recent research by the Centre for Information Research at the University of Central England in Birmingham that examined children’s use of resources in the specific context of the learning cultures in which children are raised and the resource provision available.  The intention was to give insight into the ways in which children are equipped with the skills to become future lifelong learners. Bearing in mind that social, economic, cultural and institutional barriers to active participation in lifelong learning are set in place at an early age, an examination of the ways in which these impact upon children is vital.

Tilusha Ghelani, Sarah McNicol and Clare Nankivell, University of Central England, Tilusha.Ghelani@uce.ac.uk
 

4) Good practice in staff development for widening participation in HE.

This paper looked at staff development in relation to widening participation. It investigated staff development practices relating to the improvement of retention of students from groups underrepresented in Higher Education. The paper discussed issues critical to explore and understand the process of identifying good practice and presents interim findings from the project. 

First, the paper introduces the background and rationale to the project and discusses the three key areas addressed by the study: human resource and staff development issues; teaching and learning and the curriculum; and finally, student retention and support. Second, the paper looked at the methods and resources used to investigate the key areas and to identify best practice case studies. Finally the paper discussed initial findings at this interim stage of the research. Key elements from selected case study examples, criteria for good practice and the evident variety in good practice models were drawn out.

Dr. Angela Srivastava, Research Fellow, Educational Research and Evaluation Unit,
School of Lifelong Education and Development, University of Bradford, a.srivastava1@bradford.ac.uk
 

5) University for Industry/learndirect – a flagship for on-line learning for all?

University for Industry (Ufi) was introduced in 1998 as a Government initiative to stimulate lifelong learning, particularly through the use of information and communication technologies. The availability of national development funding created a significant profile allied to some confusion – Ufi is not a university and is not specifically for industry!

This paper explored how tensions have occurred between centrally-driven policies and local delivery of learning through geographical learning hubs. Examples were taken from the Staffordshire Learning Hub to highlight issues including: production and use of learning materials; take-up of ICT learning materials; development of support staff in learning centres; pricing policies; and linkages to other on-line learning initiatives. There is early evidence that the Ufi/learndirect initiative is widening participation by attracting new learners to strategically-located, branded, learning centres. Is this branding and hype? Is it local networking? Is it a bit of both?

David Jenkins, Director of Widening Participation and Access, Staffordshire University, d.jenkins@staffs.ac.uk
Brenda Jackson, Widening Participation Manager, Staffordshire Learning and Skills Council, brenda.jackson@lsc.gov.uk
 

6) Critically examining a schools-based aspiration-raising initiative

The following abstract replaced the paper originally planned for this session. 
The Select Committee Report Access to Higher Education states that ‘prospects for widened participation will be transformed when schools succeed in persuading students from poor backgrounds to stay on in school beyond the age of 16’. Many schools located in areas with low staying-on rates are involved in projects designed to raise students’ aspirations towards post-compulsory education. This paper looked at one such initiative targeting 13 and 14 year olds, encouraging them to ‘aim high’. Drawing on data from a series of semi-structured interviews with pupils and staff, it examined the ways in which the process perpetuated inequalities rather than encouraging disadvantaged students. Firstly, it considers the issue of targeting and selecting appropriate pupils. Secondly, it discusses the type of activities that are offered.  Finally it examines the way in which groups that possess greater cultural capital gain more benefits from the same activities, thus exacerbating the gap in participation rates between different socio-economic groups.

Liz Thomas, Senior Research Fellow and Director, Institute for Access Studies, Staffordshire University, et3@staffs.ac.uk
Kim Slack, Research Officer, Institute for Access Studies, Staffordshire University, ks5@staffs.ac.uk

The details of the paper to be presented by Paula Surridge are included below.  This workshop DID not take place at the conference, due to illness.

Putting it about: Lessons from widening participation work in secondary schools

The immediate area surrounding Salford University has one of the poorest post-16 educational records in England. We have sought to identify ways in which the university could contribute to raising awareness of post-compulsory education, as part of this programme of projects a number of visits have been made to local schools. These visits have taken the form of a 50-minute talk and question and answer session, led by academic staff from the university and undertaken with Year 10 students in schools with the key aim of providing information to those who have little or no knowledge/experience of university life. This paper considers lessons learnt from the visits, the kinds of questions asked by pupils and the possible impact of such an outreach programme in widening participation in higher education.

Paula Surridge, School of English, University of Salford, p.surridge@salford.ac.uk

If you would like us to include details of conferences or events which are likely to be of interest to practitioners and researchers working in the field of access studies, please email Carmel.Dennison@staffs.ac.uk

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