The future for widening participation and fair access

13 May 2011

A report by Peter Barron, SLN Deputy Director

On 10 May 2001 I attended Westminster Briefing's The future for widening participation and fair access conference. Speakers included Simon Hughes MP, the Government’s Advocate for Access to Education, Aaron Porter of the NUS, Sarah Howls of HEFCE and representatives from BIS, the Russell Group, the OU, Birkbeck, Higher Education Careers Service Unit (HECSU), AccessHE and the Institute of Careers Guidance.

The vast majority of the audience were Aimhigher or widening participation practitioners. BIS and the Russell Group urged schools and colleges to improve their IAG although there was still no news on what the new all-age careers service might look like. The audience asked that enough funding be put aside to allow for some face-to-face work and not just the web-based and telephone service which is being mooted. HEFCE reiterated their commitment to WP and highlighted all the coalition government’s statements on how key WP and social mobility were. BIS concentrated on opening access to the most selective institutions. For example: “the most advantaged 20% of young people are seven times more likely to enter the most selective institutions than the most disadvantaged 40%”. I have to say (and did say in a question) there was very little reference to promoting progression for those with more vocational qualifications.

HECSU talked about the findings of the Futuretrack project following a large cohort of students who entered HE in 2006. They highlighted the high percentage of learners who felt they had not had enough information and guidance about choices of courses and how they related to employment prospects. They also highlighted how part-time students tended to get most of their careers advice from their employer rather than an independent professional careers advice service.

The OU and Birkbeck College highlighted how large the part-time sector is (40% of students). With the new loans system being open to them and plans for UCAS to start displaying part-time courses (although applicants would still have to apply directly to the institution for the moment) there was a feeling that this market is likely to expand and that more of the HE sector needs to plan more flexible courses. What’s more, the profiles of students at both the OU and Birkbeck were much more socially representative than the HE norm, suggesting that part-time could be a high contributor to WP targets in future for those who chose to develop it.

Lastly, Simon Hughes MP gave us his thoughts which obviously represent the Lib Dem point of view in the coalition government as he is their deputy leader. He thought that FE colleges were as important in stimulating WP to HE as improved IAG. He had recommended (in his official role as Advocate for Access to Education) to OFFA that one of their criteria for judging Access Agreements should be how much of providers’ Aimhigher activity was retained. He didn’t think that the National Scholarship Fund would widen participation in the sense that it would not be the determining factor in whether someone chose a university at 18. He commended the Harvard approach of going out to the community and advertising their scholarships to 15 year olds to raise their aspirations. He said he had read a lot of the Access Agreements and felt the majority were “dreadful” in that they were too “general” and didn’t have enough “measurable” targets in them. He would press for them to have targets for improvement which increased year on year. He was working on a proposal for a school leaving ceremony for 16 year olds and for an online “career account” created by learners and which could be used to market lifelong learning opportunities to them. On university fees, he thought that a number of Russell Group universities were being “dishonest” in saying they needed to charge £9,000 to break even. On Aimhigher, he hoped that universities would work collaboratively and regionally on widening access in future (AccessHE, which is doing this in London also presented). Finally on careers advice, he said that in today’s House of Commons debate, he would press for a dedicated WP and a dedicated (and accredited) careers guidance person to be present in every secondary school.