scholarly journals Evidencing the impact of widening participation access programmes for under-16s: Assessment within the Higher Education Field Academy

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-112
Author(s):  
Carenza Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Education Field

The Impact on French Upper Secondary Schools of Reforms Aiming to Improve Students’ Transition to Higher Education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clement Pin ◽  
Agnès van Zanten
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Upper Secondary School ◽  
Online Application ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
Educational Guidance ◽  
The Impact

For a long time, the French education system has been characterized by strong institutional disconnection between secondary education (enseignement secondaire) and higher education (enseignement supérieur). This situation has nevertheless started to change over the last 20 years as the “need-to-adapt” argument has been widely used to push for three sets of interrelated reforms with the official aim of improving student flows to, and readiness for, higher education (HE). The first reforms relate to the end-of-upper-secondary-school baccalauréat qualification and were carried out in two waves. The second set of reforms concerns educational guidance for transition from upper secondary school to HE, including widening participation policies targeting socially disadvantaged youths. Finally, the third set has established a national digital platform, launched in 2009, to manage and regulate HE applications and admissions. These reforms with strong neoliberal leanings have nevertheless been implemented within a system that remains profoundly conservative. Changes to the baccalauréat, to educational guidance, and to the HE admissions system have made only minor alterations to the conservative system of hierarchical tracks, both at the level of the lycée (upper secondary school) and in HE, thus strongly weakening their potential effects. Moreover, the reforms themselves combine neoliberal discourse and decisions with other perspectives and approaches aiming to preserve and even reinforce this conservative structure. This discrepancy is evident in the conflicting aims ascribed both to guidance and to the new online application and admissions platform, expected, on the one hand, to raise students’ ambitions and give them greater latitude to satisfy their wishes but also, on the other hand, to help them make “rational” choices in light of both their educational abilities and trajectories and their existing HE provision and job prospects. This mixed ideological and structural landscape is also the result of a significant gap in France between policy intentions and implementation at a local level, especially in schools. Several factors are responsible for this discrepancy: the fact that in order to ward off criticism and protest, reforms are often couched in very abstract terms open to multiple interpretations; the length and complexity of the reform circuit in a centralized educational system; the lack of administrative means through which to oversee implementation; teachers’ capacity to resist reform, both individually and collectively. This half-conservative, half-liberal educational regime is likely to increase inequalities across social and ethnoracial lines for two main reasons. The first is that the potential benefits of “universal” neoliberal policies promising greater choice and opportunity for all—and even of policies directly targeting working-class and ethnic minority students, such as widening participation schemes—are frequently only reaped by students in academic tracks, with a good school record, who are mostly upper- or middle-class and White. The second is that, under the traditional conservative regime, in addition to being the victims of these students’ advantages and strategies, working-class students also continue to be channeled and chartered toward educational tracks and then jobs located at the bottom of the educational and social hierarchy.

Diversifying the discourse of progression to higher education: Digital storytelling methodology in widening participation practice

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-94
Author(s):  
Laura Mazzoli Smith
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Student Voice ◽  
Digital Storytelling ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Narrative Imagination ◽  
The North ◽  
Digital Stories ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Narrative Learning

This paper commences from a critique of the generalised discourse of individualistic capacities in widening participation to higher education. It examines the potential of digital stories to diversify understandings of progression to higher education as a reflexive learning process for participants and institutions alike, by considering one cohort of students participating in a digital storytelling award at a university in the North of England. The concepts of narrative imagination, narrative learning and reflective referentiality are utilised to advance a theoretically informed argument for the potential of this methodology, given the position set out in the paper that the impact of digital stories such as these is unlikely to be transparent or easily measurable in the positivist language of much widening participation practice. The digital storytelling methodology invites a more nuanced consideration of student voice than usually pertains in widening participation, with potential to diversify a reductive discourse of under-represented groups.

scholarly journals Does the Fear of Debt Deter Students from Higher Education?

2005 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 509-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
CLAIRE CALLENDER ◽  
JONATHAN JACKSON
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Funding Policies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Students Attitudes ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Participation In Higher Education ◽  
The Impact

Concerns over the impact of debt on participation in higher education (HE) have dominated much of the debate surrounding the most recent reforms of financial support for full-time students in England, including the introduction of variable tuition fees. Yet few studies have attempted to explore this issue in a statistically robust manner. This article attempts to fill that gap. It examines the relationship between prospective HE students' attitudes to debt, and their decisions about whether or not to enter HE. Using data derived from a survey of just under 2,000 prospective students, it shows how those from low social classes are more debt averse than those from other social classes, and are far more likely to be deterred from going to university because of their fear of debt, even after controlling for a wide range of other factors. The article concludes that these findings pose a serious policy dilemma for the Westminster government. Their student funding policies are predicated on the accumulation of debt and thus are in danger of deterring the very students at the heart of their widening participation policies.

scholarly journals Raised aspirations and attainment? A review of the impact of Aimhigher (2004–2011) on widening participation in higher education in England

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Doyle ◽  
Martyn Griffin
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Participation In Higher Education ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Quality Of Research

Aimhigher was discontinued on 31 July 2011. This paper reviews the literature analysing its contribution to widening participation to higher education in the UK. Successes of Aimhigher are considered alongside its challenges; particularly the necessity to situate policy within the diverse demands of 42 areas covering England. These issues are considered in the context of wider contemporary debates concerning the quality of research into widening participation and instruments used to evaluate policy. Four strands of literature are identified and analysed: Aimhigher's impact and evaluation, its effectiveness in targeting beneficiaries, the progression and tracking of students and policy.

scholarly journals Situating the evidence for impact of outreach strategies: A systematic review for improving access to higher education

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-54
Author(s):  
Vanessa Heaslip ◽  
Maggie Hutchings ◽  
Bethan Collins ◽  
Emma Crowley ◽  
Sue Eccles ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Systematic Review ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
Published Evidence ◽  
Meta Analyses ◽  
The Impact

Efforts to widen participation into higher education (HE) are having an impact with increasing numbers of diverse students accessing HE. Outreach is a key strategy within widening participation (WP), yet there has been little peer reviewed, published evidence regarding how outreach is identified, situated and understood. This paper addresses this gap, presenting a systematic review of published research examining how the impact of WP outreach is identified and understood in UK research. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) checklist was used to frame the review and empirical studies focusing upon outreach (2005 – 15) were included. Papers excluded were focused on international, part-time students or those not focused upon WP outreach. Twenty-six papers were identified for inclusion and these were analysed thematically. The analysis identified themes of person-centred impact, raising aspirations, and social capital, addressing 'how and why' questions rather than the 'what works' question judged by the impact of outreach on student numbers. Doing so can enable improvements in the design of outreach activities addressing individual experiences alongside structural barriers. Ultimately, this analysis suggests there is insufficient systematic evidence regarding the impact of outreach on the underlying structural factors shaping access to higher education.

Do students really engage with their skills development in the context of widening participation? An institutional case study

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 30-63
Author(s):  
Ufuk Alpsahin Cullen
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education Institution ◽  
Employability Skills ◽  
Widening Participation ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Career Plans ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Minority Ethnic

This study investigates how the prior experience of a diverse undergraduate cohort at an English higher education institution relates to barriers to employability and changes in students' perceptions of their employability skills and career plans throughout the duration of their studies. It considers the impact of a range of demographic factors used to identify students from backgrounds underrepresented in higher education (HE). Data collection was conducted within a micro institutional context where the majority of students and staff are from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds. Such diversity contributes to the originality of the study.We have adopted a mixed methods approach by bringing together both quantitative and qualitative evidence. The study took two years to complete and 150 students across different programmes participated. We found that perceived levels of employability skills were closely associated with the background and age of the students. We observed that an increase in self-awareness resulted in a significant decrease in self-confidence, which caused a change in participants' career plans from looking for a relevant job to looking for any available job.

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