Email
The numbers of disadvantaged young people in full-time higher education have risen in the past two years, yet today's report by the Independent Commission on Fees makes it abundantly clear that there are few causes for celebration.
The Commission found that despite modest gains in higher education participation among young people from less privileged backgrounds, students from the most advantaged areas remain nearly 10 times more likely to take up a place at a top university than those from the most disadvantaged areas.
The report's conclusions echo findings in July by the Higher education funding council for England (Hefce) and the Office for fair access (Offa). Again, some of the story is positive. Its report found that full-time participation rates rose among young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in 2012-13, a trend that Ucas application data suggests has continued in 2013-14.
Universities and colleges in England are increasing their investment in measures to widen access and improve success among students from low income and other under-represented groups. They have to, since they can only charge the highest fees if they make sufficient effort in widening participation.
Policymakers genuinely wishing to broaden access to higher education need to recognise that there are sizable numbers of young people for whom university is a complete irrelevance, or worse, a notion to fear.
Which is why the government's 2011 abolition of funding for the Aimhigher programme, through which schools, colleges and universities inform young people about higher education opportunities, was such a mistake.
It is also why a handful of institutions, including Birmingham City University, University of Birmingham, Aston University and University College Birmingham decided to press on regardless and self-fund Aimhigher programmes.
The Aimhigher West Midlands partnership covers an area in which 66% of schools and colleges have high proportions of pupils considered least likely to access higher education. Nationally the figure is 29%.
Free schools meals, high levels of deprivation and no parental engagement in higher education may not preclude some young people making it through on their own but they do a pretty good job. In June 2014, the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission concluded that fewer young people from disadvantaged areas in England were applying to university "than ever before".
It is why attempts to drive up participation among these young people need to be authentic and sustained. It would be easy for such work to be merely cosmetic, ticking boxes marked access while focusing the rest of our attention on less socially deprived schools and pupils, but this is to overlook a fundamental reality – outreach is not just socially and morally right, but enlightened self interest.
Since the loss of government funding in July 2011, the West Midlands partnership has engaged with 160 schools and colleges and over 8,000 young people, providing intensive support to more than 2,000 of the most deprived pupils. This is in addition to the 80,000 or more young people the four universities work with each year as part of their individual outreach work
The impact is manifest – more than half of all young people from areas where higher education participation is low, who take part in Aimhigher activity, go on to apply to university. The majority of Birmingham City University's top ten feeder institutions are classed as high priority in access terms, yet year on year we are seeing overall increases in applications from these schools.
The results are directly attributable to the availability of information about what higher education is, and what it might mean to their career prospects and life opportunities.
Showing young people what higher education can do for them is crucial and transformative, especially if the subject doesn't ever figure in conversations at home.
The funding focus has now shifted to individual universities, directly linking their charging structures to their support for widening access to disadvantaged groups.
Many institutions are starting to get to grips with the challenge but the picture is a patchy one. Offa had to reject 33 of the 172 original access agreements received for 2015-16 – all later approved but not before a bout or two of remedial work as the institutions in question worked with the access regulator to ensure they eventually passed muster.
There is a wider question, however, of whether a focus on isolated programmes can ever be the best answer to a complex question. It is notable that even the government appears to have recognised this structural deficiency in the system it devised. The former universities minister David Willetts acknowledged last year when he was reported as saying: "A widening-participation infrastructure or network would help coordinate all the good work that is happening."
It is why Hefce is now allocating £22m over a two year period (2014-16) to "support networks for collaborative outreach".
It would be churlish not to welcome an apparent change of heart. It isn't the £90m annual programme abandoned three years ago but it is a step back in the right direction.
It is also a nudge towards recognising what we in the West Midlands have never ceased comprehending – that outreach and joined up partnership working with so-called "rival" universities is a sizable part of the answer to a many-headed question.
If he does one thing in his nine months as universities minister before the election, Greg Clark should press ahead with this policy volte-face, in turn giving socially disadvantaged young people in England the opportunities they deserve.
Professor Bashir Makhoul is pro vice-chancellor at Birmingham City University.
Join the higher education network for more comment, analysis and job opportunities, direct to your inbox. Follow us on Twitter @gdnhighered.
;