Widening participation: the changing agenda

In this article from the Spring 2003 issue of Directions Mary Stuart, Pro Vice Chancellor at the University of Sussex and Associate Director, Action on Access, describes current government activity on widening participation.

The government’s white paper on the future of higher education has significant implications for those working in the sector. The document is focused on institutional diversity, forcing institutions to define themselves differently, but at the same time it explicitly states that widening participation and fair access will not be something that any institution can decide to ignore.

For many in higher education widening participation has been equated with increasing participation, the massification that took place during the 1990s. However widening participation in the white paper is not about increasing numbers – it is about changing the class bias of higher education and it is about enabling students to complete their studies successfully.

So what are HEFCE and the Department for Education and Skills doing to widen participation? There is a range of strategies, including a major programme of awareness raising for young people who would not think about higher education and Aimhigher, a programme bringing together staff from higher education, schools and further education based on partnership in localities. For lecturers, this work may have up till now been quite removed from their daily lives, but increasingly they will be asked to offer experience days for students from local schools and other activities such as summer schools for students from schools. The students who come to find out about higher education are identified by Aimhigher as being capable of progressing to higher education, but who have not expressed any interest or do not know anything about it.

It is still relatively early days for the programme, but early evidence suggests that young people really enjoy the environment of universities and colleges and are much more keen to take their studies further once they have conducted such visits than before. HE students also work with these groups, providing mentoring and support with GCSE work, to ensure the young people get the grades they need to carry on with study post16. As lecturers increasingly find themselves engaging in this work, there needs to be recognition from their institutions that they are doing it, staff development to help them work with younger people and additional resources to fund the activity.

The funding councils (HEFCE and the Learning and Skills Council) have already put aside £20 million a year for this work and more is expected. They have also appointed a national co-ordinating team for widening participation, called Action on Access. It is our role to support the sectors (further and higher education) to widen participation and to support the funding councils to develop their widening participation policies. The team includes a group of part time co-ordinators who work in higher education and who have been active in widening participation for many years. Our roles enable us to do research and to share practice among those working in the field. This is not the Access Regulator role which the government has just announced – our role is to support not to monitor.

We are working with the LTSN subject centres including UKCLE to develop widening participation strategies relevant to the needs of their communities. For some subjects widening participation may relate to the gender profile of their students, for others it will be related to disabled students and for others the issue of class will be particularly significant.

However widening participation is not just about access. Action on Access has undertaken a range of research activities examining issues relating to student success. Key lessons to be learned from this research are:

• Some institutions are doing a considerable amount of work to support under-represented groups to succeed in higher education, while others are doing very little. Many are doing more than one type of activity, with the most popular forms related to curriculum and initial (ie first semester/term) activities. However there is little evidence, despite the emphasis on curriculum development, that departmental/school targets are being developed or even that curriculum change is related to institutional targets.
• There is a distinct lack of evidence of directed planning in institutions in the area of student success. Only a few institutions are being strategic about their interventions, and there is little research into the impact of developments. Our research identifies two significant factors found in institutions that perform well in relation to student achievement practice; the use of formative assessment, especially in the early stages of a student’s learning, and staff development to improve and update faculty’s abilities to support students. However only three institutions in our analysis of widening participation strategies indicated that they were developing new strategies in relation to assessment, and only 34 highlighted the need for staff development programmes to support student success.

Clearly there is a lot of further work that can be done in this area, and LTSN subject centres will be able to play a part in supporting departments to examine their particular needs. The news that the premium for student support will be increased from 10 to 20% and that a more sophisticated methodology for calculating this premium will be used is welcome. This funding will assist in the range of activities that are required to support students who are the first in their families to go into higher education.

An increase in foundation degree programmes and other forms of credit and progression arrangements was announced in the white paper. This is challenging as, as yet, there is no significant take-up of foundation degrees. However, the value of a vocational two year programme in higher education is not a new idea and is common in many other countries, including Scotland. LTSN subject centres will need to work with their communities to establish best practice in this area and to support, where relevant, the development of these programmes.

The higher education sector has been working on credit issues for many years now, and the encouragement to progress this work will be welcomed by many, especially those who work with mature students or students who need to move in and out of study due to their life commitments. Action on Access will be working with HEFCE to examine practice across the sector in the area of credit and foundation degrees. It is encouraging to see part time study being recognised for the first time in a small, but significant, grant for those studying half time.

The next few years will create a very different map for the higher education sector. LTSN subject centres and organisations such as Action on Access will be there to support teaching staff and university managers to smooth the transitions we all face.

Last Modified: 4 June 2010