Title:
Giving widening access a real reboot
Blog post by:
Professor Graeme Atherton
Director National Education Opportunities Network (NEON) and Head of Centre for Inequality and Levelling Up (CILUP), University of West London
Published:
Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), 7 January 2022
From the blog post:
The reboot The reboot to widening access to higher education announced by the Minister for Universities last month is in some ways welcome. It is better than giving it a kicking which the government could be accused of doing over the last 18 months. But to be a real reboot, it will need to go farther than suggested by the Minister last month if we are to tackle some of the long-standing challenges in how widening access is delivered which have bedevilled the field since the 2000s and push the Office for Students into a more radical place.
Most of the changes to widening access work proposed are not entirely inconsistent with the direction of travel laid out by the government since mid-2020 where access and success are concerned.