Widening access is a live political issue in the UK and the microscope is being turned on Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) like never before. University admissions procedures are under review all over the country. In some quarters of the press this has been interpreted as “Class War”. In 2002 the newly appointed Principal of the University of Edinburgh Professor Timothy O’Shea was widely quoted as trying to rid the university of its image as a “snobby place full of tweedy people with English accents”. Independent, or private, schools in England advised their students not to apply to the University of Bristol, as they believed that widening access policies were discriminating against privately educated young people.
The issue has been sensationalised in the press, and they have pounced on deliberately provocative remarks such as those made by Professor O’Shea. It is far easier to write a polemic based on an inflammatory headline than look at the substance of complex university admissions procedures. The substance is that universities are looking for fairer admissions policies and this means looking at more than just the grades achieved at High School, which we encourage at LEAPS or Lothians Equal Access Programme for Schools. (For more information on LEAPS, see http://www.leapsonline.org.)
LEAPS is a pioneering widening access programme, one of the first in the UK dating back to 1996, and is a model of partnership in action. The current LEAPS partnership involves five Edinburgh based Higher Education Institutions: University of Edinburgh, Heriot Watt University, Napier University, Queen Margaret University College and the Scottish Agricultural College; four Local Authorities: the City of Edinburgh, East and West Lothian and Midlothian Councils, and Careers Scotland, who are a professional Careers Guidance organisation in Scotland.
LEAPS works in 46 Secondary Schools covering a wide geographical area from Dunbar on the East Coast to Whitburn and Bathgate in the West. Our remit is to promote the idea of Higher Education. Many of the schools we work with have had single figure progression statistics for students entering Higher Education (HE) when they leave school. LEAPS goal is to increase this number significantly.
So how do we do this? The LEAPS year starts in August with a programme of interviews for final year students who intend to make University applications in October or January. The interviews are confidential discussions between LEAPS staff and the students to find out if there is anything in their background that might have prevented them from fulfilling their full potential in set examinations. (Set exams are high-school leaving exams which are also used for university entrance certification.) We look at illness, social background, family circumstances, economic circumstances, community influence and whether there is any tradition of moving onto HE in the immediate family. Degree programmes of interest are discussed and pre-entry guidance is offered.
From here, we move into negotiation with HEIs, and that is any HEI; LEAPS has a multi-exit strategy so LEAPS is not a recruitment tool for any sole University. By November we will have advised the students of the requirements for the university of their choice. In many cases this will involve attendance at the LEAPS Summer School, in some cases grades asked for might be below the going asking rate, but this will depend upon individual circumstances. LEAPS has a small team of seven, three of whom work part-time. Four are employed in delivery, but we can call upon an ‘in kind’ contribution from our partner HEIs which is just as well as to date we have interviewed in excess of 1200 students between August and November 2003 across 46 High Schools. This as you can imagine is an organisational challenge that would test a government department never mind a team of seven.
From November to April we deliver a variety of workshops and university campus based events promoting HE. To do this we engage a small army of volunteer students from our partner HEIs, many of who are searching for relevant work experience to support an application for teacher training or other work with young people. There is plenty of work to go around. We delivered around 150 schools based events last year and most workshops are attended by numbers between 40 -100; we can utilise anything from two to ten volunteers per workshop. The workshop programme works from age twelve upwards and also includes heavy promotion of the LEAPS Summer Schools.
Summer School will commence on 8 June 2004 and will run for eight weeks; the concept is to deliver a virtual first semester. The Summer School is also an Access to Higher Education programme, which means that a good performance at Summer School will help students secure a place on a degree programme if they do not reach the grades asked for in their High School exams.
The 2003 Summer School saw 132 students graduate from a total of 144 who started the School with 87% going onto HE. Eighty students required a positive Summer School Report to gain access to their programme of choice. The LEAPS Summer School 2004 has an upper limit of 150 places; early indications are that we will fill them all. For Summer School we employ upwards of 80 staff, which include co-ordinators, lecturers, demonstrators and personal tutors.
The whole LEAPS programme could not function without a partnership ethos. The universities and their staff all contribute to the Schools Programme and the Summer School. The High Schools see great value in what we do and welcome our involvement. LEAPS is making a difference to their progression rates. Without partnership co-operation LEAPS could not progress with our major research project to evaluate the programme looking at destinations, progression and the end result. We are tracking 360 students from disadvantaged backgrounds, out of the 509 who entered HE in 2000-2001.
LEAPS has sponsorship from Industry with the Royal Bank of Scotland contributing a large sum towards Summer School bursaries. Fidelity PLC also offer financial support and provide LEAPS with funds to run an IT programme within the Summer School.
There are many people and groups who believe that the UK Governments target of 50% of young people entering HE is either a misguided policy or just unattainable. In Scotland, this target has already been met.
In October of 2002, The Sunday Times ran an article claiming Scottish Universities were declaring “Class War” on the back of Professor O’Shea’s remarks and then went on to misinterpret the whole question of widening access. The article “So which one is privileged?” concentrated mainly on the “Russell Group” of Universities (elite research higher education institutions, e.g. Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, Edinburgh, St Andrews, etc.) which have an extremely high percentage of students from independent schools, between 49% and 24%, in attendance. When we consider that only 7% of the overall UK population are privately educated we can see that this is not a proportionate distribution. The article tried to suggest that independently educated young people were being prejudiced against by wider access policies.
Be it The Sunday Times, representatives of the Construction Industry or the Institute of Directors, representing executives in corporations, everyone has a spin on widening access. The argument goes, in the words of the IoD’s Ruth Lea, “We need more plumbers and fewer media studies graduates.” This is an unhelpful and poorly researched comment since it presumes that widening access programmes are engaged in poaching potential plumbers, electricians and joiners. Perhaps the building trades should start to widen their own access and recruit from the countries independent schools?
The issue is not about the need for more plumbers; it is about ensuring that the right people become plumbers and those who aspire to a university education achieve their goals. LEAPS is solely interested in helping young people to fulfil their potential and in many cases against great odds.
Traditionalists may lament the passing of a university-educated elite, but it is no longer possible for a modern economy to flourish with a minority in possession of the sophisticated knowledge. In his celebrated text The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida has pointed out that universities are engines of creative diversity, and they prime western economies. To survive and flourish universities need students and a progressive society needs creative educated graduates.
UK Government statistics predict by 2010, eight out of ten advertised vacancies will require candidates educated to degree level. Universities are responding to this need by supporting programmes such as LEAPS.
A note: This article was submitted by a Viewpoints subscriber from overseas. For that reason, the editors have decided to remain faithful to the original British spelling and usage.
©Copyright 2004. Contact author for permission
Maintained by Jay Howard,Apr 2004