HEFCE widening participation and fair access research strategy

A NIACE response to the Higher Education Funding Council for England consultation document 2004/06

Published: April 2004

1. The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) is the UK’s leading non-governmental organisation for adult learning. NIACE is a voluntary organisation, a charity and company limited by guarantee, owned by its members. The main aim of NIACE is to promote the study and advancement of adult continuing education by securing more and different forms of adult learning for more and different learners, especially those who have benefited least from initial education.

2. In recent years NIACE has increased its involvement with both higher and further education policy and research, recognising the importance of mass higher education to the life chances and quality of life of a rising majority of the population.

3. NIACE is pleased to be recognised in Annex C of the Consultation paper as being among the key widening participation stakeholders. This applies especially to the mature age and part-time students who tend to fall outside the Government’s main current policy focus on 18-30 year olds.

4. NIACE is also keen to work with HEFCE in the broader territory of lifelong learning which, as the Consultation acknowledges, is at an early stage of formulation and development (paras. 57-61) but is of high and rising importance with changing demography.

5. There is an important conceptual problem here that continues to blight the development of a lifelong learning strategy. The meaning and policy relevance of lifelong learning are larger than simply widening participation (W/P) in higher education yet it is treated as a sub-set of the issue rather than an overarching dimension of W/P. This is exemplified in para. 23, where the term appears to be used implying perhaps simply older learners. It would be timely for HEFCE to take aboard this issue, which continues to confuse the policy agenda.

6. NIACE warmly welcomes this initiative by the Funding Council to further develop and strengthen its research strategy in respect of widening participation. It notes and commends the three guiding principles, and the intention to connect with and take account of research relating to the Council’s other three strategic aims (para. 17).

7. NIACE considers partnership in respect of widening participation strategies, and in respect of developing, sharing, accessing and using research in this area, to be essential to the success of the venture. NIACE agrees that significant investment is required to generate adequate research data and evidence to underpin policy (para. 74). It considers that partnership among different research bodies and the involvement of different users of the research, including diverse Government portfolios, is one key to attracting this necessary investment. In this sense a number of other portfolios alongside Education might be listed among the key stakeholders.

8. Comments below adopt the framework invited by the Consultation. No attempt is made to commend and comment specifically on the many excellent features of this Consultation paper.

9. The emphases on partnership, both as a means and as a subject, is fitting. So is the participatory orientation which recognises that there is much grounded local research and evaluation. HEFCE could add significant value by connecting these efforts, and where possible enabling each local effort to contribute to a larger cumulative evidence base for what works.

10. A central dilemma for this whole project derives from restrictions dictated by HEFCE’s charter and terms of reference. Inevitable inhibitions appear frequently in the paper. They threaten to limit the value of the whole development. Para. 14 wisely seeks for HEFCE to take account of others’ research. Para. 16 exemplifies limits set by remit and seeks stronger DfES cooperation to work round such issues (the same applies for example to FE and foundation degrees as well as to early years educational experience).

11. An impression, from experience for example of the DfES Advisory Panel on Research on Issues for Higher Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills, is that essentially parallel research agendas and spending programmes grow up alongside each other with barely an acknowledgement of others’ efforts. Allowing the need for proper caution and the limit on resources, at this time when the idea of joined-up effort is officially blessed, HEFCE might lead more assertively still in seeking to make partnership work in this area, where needs will always outstrip resources.

12. To the commendable priorities set out should be added a larger strategic sense which will generate other kinds of inquiry that do not work exclusively within the present paradigm. One approach advocated at times and acknowledged in the paper is to adopt a stronger ‘life cycle’ framework.

13. This would enable inclusion of earlier years education, the work perhaps sponsored by other bodies but as part of a shared integrative set of inquiries.

14. It would also bring up the importance of later life access, especially part-time study and the different and diverse needs of mature age students, in the context of the new demography and deferred retirement.

15. It would also give a more significant role to family, neighbourhood and community forces and influences, thereby tackling issues of aspiration, motivation and social exclusion in a deeper and more promising way. Again, collaborative partnership in research strategy and funding is required, given the limits to HEFCE’s direct remit.

16. This is clearly a central and proper priority for HEFCE. It has to be a priority. However, the points made above apply here. Attitudinal factors need to be considered from outside and not only within the system.

17. It is important not to reinvent the wheel, but to build on the decades of often robust work on barriers in the research literature. On the other hand, a historical and comparative perspective may help us to see more clearly what has been solved and what new problems may have emerged in current conditions.

18. Para. 34 addresses some important matters. We need more longitudinal work, and better cumulative data that is both safe and that covers the whole lifespan and not only the immediate school ages. Second chance access may remain important and viable alongside wider first chance access, for individuals but equally for a low birth-rate longer living society.

19. There are important questions of identity, ownership and use to consider here. HEFCE’s identity may make it a vital advocate and partner in such a venture, but make it less appropriate to provide (alone) a service that will be of high value and widely used, for reasons touched on above.

20. Many of the key issues sit outside HEFCE’s formal remit. The LSC FE sector is one vital part, as well as the school system. Nor can it be assumed that the Council will be seen as sufficiently broad, and indeed benevolent, to provide a service used and valued by the practitioner community at the heart of widening participation.

21. The facility could be of great value, but it needs to be more widely created and owned than by any one stakeholder.

22. Para. 49 is important because of a real need to test common assumptions (myths) that may be significant factors in having confidence in and rolling out a viable strategy.

23. Earlier comments about being strategic and wide-reaching, alone and especially in partnership with other stakeholders and resource-holders, apply here.

24. It is important to keep asking in focused and practical ways if policy is widening and not simply increasing the volume of participation, and where the new kinds and cohorts of students are entering the system.

25. In commending the present set of W/P research priorities and immediate plans, this response asks that HEFCE keep central to its thinking the cumulative impact of the many changes taking place. These include sector differentiation, and the impact of other (non-education) players and factors, as well as the more narrowly defined arena of HE W/P initiatives.

26. On the edge of this paper, the emergent role of OFFA represents a risk to policy development favouring W/P. The uncritical acceptance of ‘fair’ as the remit of OFFA (and indeed the title of this Consultation document) allows for ‘fairness’ to be no more than transparent and fine-tuned allocation of the most prestigious university places to the most fortunate and well supported among our able school leavers.

27. There is the risk that much energy will go into making more efficient the workings of a system to entrench privilege, even while the discourse of equity and wider access is used. This is a risk at several levels, from the broadest societal interest in social inclusion and opportunity to the danger that OFFA will be seen as securing all that we need by way of access especially to the more prestigious institutions.

28. A different kind of tension, if not risk, is found in the Consultation’s Aim and KP Target (para. 12). There appears to be a non-trivial disjunction between the Objectives (accept, understand, use and use) and the KP Target which has much less to do with action and results.

29. The intention to link to and connect with the many local endeavours of W/P practitioners, (eg. through AimHigher), should automatically connect with diversity, providing the approach is by means of genuinely participatory partnership. The danger could be that tidy-minded central administration of the proposed programme predetermines what the issues and therefore relevant findings are, imposing standard frameworks which are blind to the differences research could uncover. The contemporary penchant for ‘evidence base’ enhances that risk.

30. On the other hand working with regional authorities, especially RDAs, as co-owners, could ensure that the regional and sub-regional agenda is more fully honoured.

31. Institutional diversity will probably care for itself, given the salience of the ‘elite versus mass’ agenda. The question is what can be done to put into effect, a desire, that the more elite institutions contribute to any generous sense of widening participation beyond refining their selection of the very brightest of the disadvantaged.

32. Modelling of quite other forms of selection and distribution of aspirants to HE might be worth attempting, at least to present alternative critical perspectives and to keep the research agenda open.

33. If there is a threat at the level of the individual it may be that economy requires us to work with categories and aggregations (of disability, age, gender, particular ethnic groups, etc.)

34. NIACE staff would be pleased to answer questions and provide further information about anything in this response. Please contact (in the first instance) Professor Chris Duke, Associate Director, Higher Education (e-mail: chris.duke@niace.org.uk )

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