Widening Access. GCU has a strong tradition of widening access to higher education for individuals regardless of their backgrounds, and aims to unlock talent, raise aspirations and promote social mobility. Strategy 2020 ensures that widening access is central to the University’s vision, and sets out our commitment to delivering a distinctive student experience which supports students through their learning journey and into employment. GCU is a leading institution for recruitment of Scottish entrants from widening access backgrounds, as evidenced by data published by the SFC in November 2014. The recruitment is matched by a strong track record in terms of student retention (see Figure 2, Page 5). All institutions Glasgow Caledonian University % from 20% most deprived % from 40% most deprived % students from SEC 4,5,6,7 40% 41% 33% 29% 21% 13% Underpinning Strategy 2020, the University’s supporting strategies and policies, such as Strategy for Learning, Student Experience Framework, and Student Transition and Progression Roadmap outline the key actions and activities that we are engaged in to deliver on our commitment to widening access. We are committed to the Supporting Professional Admissions and have established a new working group to ensure that our contextualised admissions approach implements best practice in supporting widening access. GCU has significant research expertise in widening access and articulation, and has applied this knowledge to inform policy development and to provide enhanced opportunities for access. Each of our key widening access initiatives has an associated evaluation strategy in place to assess impact and inform future developments. 1xxxx://xxx.xxx.xx.xx/communications/Statisticalpublications/2014/SFCST062014.aspx Founded in 2008, The Caledonian Club has worked with 9,000 nursery, primary and secondary school pupils, almost 3,000 parents and over 250 GCU student mentors through an early intervention model programme of activities which is designed in partnership with schools to enhance the curriculum and help to build confidence and key life skills in Club members and student mentors. In 2013‐14, the Caledonian Club worked with over 2,200 children from nurseries, primary and secondary schools and 385 parents from local Glasgow communities and our GCU London Club engaged with 300 pupils from schools in the local community. The Club’s commitment to working with parents has resulted in the development of formal and informal learning opportunities...
Widening Access. The core purpose of the University of Glasgow at Dumfries is to create a world class, research-intensive university environment in niche areas matched to the Dumfries and Xxxxxxxx location, thereby serving regional and national stakeholders whilst working in an international context. Our vision for the Dumfries Campus is for it to be a centre of world-class interdisciplinary teaching, research and lifelong learning. Its areas of specialism include: environment, culture, health, wellbeing, social policy, education and tourism. Our objective is for activity on the Campus to reach the highest academic standards and to support the social and economic needs of the region. We seek to do this from a position of institutional strength that makes it possible for the University to engage with the considerable partnership and collaboration opportunities that are to be found on the Xxxxxxxx Campus. University of Glasgow also receive SFC strategic funding which helps support our infrastructure, in particular the Xxxxxxxxxx-XxXxxxx building – this funding is fully utilised. UofG will account for use of this funding through the consolidated annual self-evaluation progress report on Xxxxxxxx to SFC in October covering the preceding academic year. Maintain and develop our portfolio of WP schools outreach and adult learner programmes alongside our partnership and collaborative work to widen access to UofG, but also the rest of Scotland. We will expand the findings of our SFC funded Impact for Access project ‘Engaging with MD40 pupils in High Progression Schools’, which has significant relevance to the Dumfries and Xxxxxxxx context. Enhancing and streamlining a fair and accessible learner journey, while ensuring that all young people are able to select from a range of fairly distributed, high-quality post-school opportunities which best match their aptitude and ambition, is a challenge recognised by The Xxxxxxxx Campus partners as being best tackled collaboratively. Reflecting that, we will continue to support the multi-partnership approach delivering the ‘Planning for Your Future’ (PFYF) programme which is unique to Dumfries and provides a 3- day residential experience targeted at S3 pupils, who are considering their senior phase choices. Our presence in Dumfries also allows us to support other key Scottish Government initiatives. For example, by offering Articulation places in partnership with Scotland’s Colleges, particularly Dumfries and Xxxxxxxx College, appropriately q...
Widening Access. General: Heriot-Watt is a university which is committed to rigorous selection of students on competitive merit, and is by history and ethos averse to social exclusivity and every other form of discrimination. For a university of our type, and with a recruitment catchment for Scottish students mainly in the southeast of the country, we have already made good progress towards a student profile that is socially inclusive. In particular, over the period 2012-2016 the University achieved step changes – “intensified” its performance – in terms of entrants from SIMD20/40 (the 20% and 40% most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Scotland as identified by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation) and also in entrants articulating with full credit for Higher National qualifications achieved at Colleges in Scotland.
Widening Access. Context: What we will do: their quality of life, work and wellbeing. Together we will develop best practice in CLD to effectively work with people to realise their aspirations’. In conjunction with the CLD reporting data and as a result of the work done by the Community Liaison Officer, a report has been generated which will facilitate the following:
Widening Access expands the already strong admission pathways into UTS for school leavers and mature aged students to help Low SES and Indigenous students gain access to university.
Widening Access. GCU has a strong tradition of widening access to higher education for individuals regardless of their backgrounds, and aims to unlock talent, raise aspirations and promote social mobility. Strategy 2020 ensures that widening access is central to the University’s vision, and sets out our commitment to delivering a distinctive student experience which supports students through their learning journey and into employment. GCU is a leading institution for recruitment of Scottish entrants from widening access backgrounds, as evidenced by data published by the SFC in November 2014. The recruitment is matched by a strong track record in terms of student retention (see Figure 2, Page 5). Underpinning Strategy 2020, the University’s supporting strategies and policies, such as Strategy for Learning, Student Experience Framework, and Student Transition and Progression Roadmap outline the key actions and activities that we are engaged in to deliver on our commitment to widening access. We are committed to the Supporting Professional Admissions and have established a new working group to ensure that our contextualised admissions approach implements best practice in supporting widening access. GCU has significant research expertise in widening access and articulation, and has applied this knowledge to inform policy development and to provide enhanced opportunities for access. Each of our key widening access initiatives has an associated evaluation strategy in place to assess impact and inform future developments. The Club’s commitment to working with parents has resulted in the development of formal and informal learning opportunities for parents. Working in partnership with the Open University, the Club supports parents in our partner nursery and primary schools to rejoin education through the OU ‘Openings Module’. We are in dialogue to expand our parental engagement specifically targeting the ‘harder to reach’ parents to offer support tailored to improving their work-readiness. The University’s College Connect Strategy 2013-2020 has been shortlisted for the Universities Association for Lifelong Learning (UALL) Award in 2015. Our approach has a number of key strands: We anticipate that our LAAC outreach initiative will encourage more students to consider progressing to higher education and to self-identify as care leavers through UCAS. We will continue to develop our regional links and share good practice via mechanisms including ‘Who Cares Scotland’, the West of Scotl...
Widening Access. 3.1 Widening access to our University Figure 1: % of entrants that were from MD20 in 2009‐10
Widening Access. We have included the historical contextual data from a study carried out in 2011, which demonstrates the performance of the University College in widening access. This was included in the Access Agreement 2012-13 updated where applicable, and shows a good record on widening access as measured by the parental background of students, social class and family income. Our 2012/13 Access Agreement includes provision for a Student Experience Data Officer which will enable this data to be tracked and updated. Figure 1 below demonstrates the number of full time undergraduate students whose parents have no background in higher education (HE). Figure 2 shows the same data excluding those that did not know or did not give information. This shows that half of all undergraduate students fall into this category. This means that the majority of students are first generation into HE.
Figure 1 Actual number (left) and percentages over data known for full-time 1st year entrants and their parental education (Number with known data N= 2,642). Key: YPHE = Students with parental background in HE; NPHE = Students with no parental background in HE Figure 3, below, demonstrates that the University College is also successfully diversifying the age profile of its student body as set out below.
