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Editorial, Volume 2, Number 2, Autumn 2000
"Access in the news", Jonathan Brown
The press release for one of the newly designated medical schools said:
One of our aims...is to broaden access to medical education by offering bursaries and encouraging applications from people from disadvantaged backgrounds and by enabling the direct entry of graduates from health-related disciplines who have at least two years post qualifying experience (University of Exeter, 2000).
This is a heartening development, but it is also a reminder of how much of the access agenda has yet to be achieved. Moreover, a widening of access to medical school in the South West corner of England needs to be matched by equivalent action elsewhere.
The summer of 2000 has been punctuated by several newspaper headlines on access, including much comment on eighteen-year-old access to our ancient universities. At the same time there have been other, predicable, comments on pass rates for degrees, A levels and GCSE with questions about the rise or fall in standards. This year's comment has also involved consideration of gender and ethnic background.
For the commentator wishing to take a longer view, three issues are noticeable from a consideration of the more transitory news features:
 | Access and accessibility is of interest well beyond the arena of post-compulsory education. |
| In the environment of reports in newspaper, radio and television, the comments of the informed are difficult to identify amidst the noise from the uninformed. |
| Contemporary comment and opinion on access and, indeed, credit concentrates on early years and the linkage to lifelong and lifespan learning is rarely made. |
In a sense these issues are part of the justification for the publication of the Journal of Access and Credit Studies. These issues are also a reminder of the need to look for good practice in unlikely places:
Successful lifelong learning strategies will seek to achieve high standards and excellence, but will also be prepared to look for these in unusual places...Above all, those of us working with learners will be aware that lifelong learning is about far more than structure, institutions, policies and politics (Sand, 1998).
Access, accessibility and the celebration of achievement are on the agenda of JACS. We hope that the journal looks in both the usual and the unusual places; that the views of students and practitioners are reflected and related to structures and policies. Above all the hope is that our interest transcends to transient and that which is newsworthy in July and August.
References
University of Exeter (2000) Peninsula Medical School bid is accepted! Exeter: University of Exeter (Press Release). http://info.ex.ac.uk/admin/exeter/press/medscm.htm
Sand B (1998) 'Lifelong Learning: vision, policy and practice' in JACS 1 (1) 17-39.
