What Next for Widening Participation?

Dr Lauren Bellaera reflects on the key topics and issues currently being discussed in Widening Participation. These insights are based on our 2022 Widening Participation Conference.

I always find that December is a reflective month – the end of the calendar year, one term into the new academic year, and generally a time when people can slow down and take stock of what is happening in the world. Timely then, that December was when Inside Government hosted their annual Widening Participation Conference, bringing together senior stakeholders, practitioners and researchers to discuss and reflect on what is happening in Widening Participation (WP).

In total, over 50 colleagues from across the sector came together in London, representing universities, third sector organisations, and charities from across the UK. The conference consisted of talks, panel discussions and practical workshops and my role, as Chair, was to guide the conference and to bring together the key topics and issues that were being discussed. In what follows, I share the things that stood out for me the most and why, I think, this is a transformative time for WP.

Policy Speaks Volumes

It is fair to say that over the last twelve months there have been significant policy announcements for education as a whole, as well as within WP. Most likely at the forefront of everyone’s minds, and certainly universities, is the Office for Students’ latest proposals for Access and Participation Plans, which expect higher education (HE) providers to form meaningful and effective partnerships with schools to raise attainment, as well as significantly increasing the quantity and quality of evaluation work. Further guidance will follow, but the direction of travel is clear – attainment and evaluation are central pillars for Access and Participation Plans moving forward.

In light of these regulatory changes, what is emerging from the WP sector, and what certainly came across strongly at the conference, is a commitment to meaningful and sustained collaboration – be that collaboration with the communities that we work with, collaboration with other WP organisations to deliver outreach activities, or collaboration with evaluation bodies.

The Power of Convening and Community Organising

The power of convening and community organising came through both from speakers and delegates at the conference. In particular, recognising that universities and third sector organisations have significant convening powers that could and should be utilised to strengthen the outcomes of WP. For instance, by identifying the key actors that operate within the community so they can share their experiences, impart knowledge, and help to drive forward change.

Creating spaces to bring these actors together is key and is something that HE institutions can support with – they have the physical space, the symbolic presence, as well as the networks to engage with the surrounding communities. Examples of how this approach has been effective was shared by Nottingham Trent University, as well as how we, The Brilliant Club, have adopted a community organising approach, alongside partner universities, working with parents in local communities through Parent Power.

Importantly, by focusing on convening and community organising approaches, it moves away from the narrative that WP organisations always need to drive a top-down model of delivery, but instead signals the value of meaningful co-creation with stakeholders to implement activities and programmes. These principles also link to an established methodology that is gaining traction across a number of sectors, including WP, called design thinking.

Related to the idea of design thinking, were interesting reflections from Arts University Bournemouth about meaningful engagement when it comes to Widening Participation and the need for a more creative approach to engage and immerse audiences. One example from Arts University Bournemouth was the ‘How to be a boy’ documentary premiere that forms part of the Access and Participation team’s Being a Boy initiative.

Programme Delivery and Evaluation are Symbiotic

NEON was our closing keynote of the day and reminded us all that good practice is happening already and we must not lose sight of this. The idea that we do not need to start all over again was also something that was echoed by universities and charities as part of an earlier panel discussion on the future of effective school partnerships and outreach. For example, there was a sense that universities already have a clear understanding of the types of attainment-raising activities that impact student outcomes, and there is emerging evidence about the effectiveness of these activities in a WP context. Instead, what we need to do next as a sector is to continue to build this evidence base, testing it in our own contexts wherever possible, and creating a shared understanding of outcomes and measures that will enable us to connect programme delivery meaningfully with evaluation.

WP is Greater than the Sum of its Parts

To end where we started, our opening keynote was by TASO and they shared insights about understanding the causal impact of different types of WP interventions. In addition, TASO recently commissioned a project to develop a set of validated surveys that can be used by the WP sector to measure student access and success work. This is work that we at The Brilliant Club are conducting, alongside researchers from the University of Cambridge, and the importance of having robust measures which measure evidence-based intermediate outcomes in a WP context cannot be understated.

This, in collaboration with the work that HEAT does to track university progression and success marks significant evaluation milestones in WP. And as a sector, we should build on this in order to fully understand the combined impact of our work as well as the differential impact of specific activities and programmes. For me, and what came across strongly at the conference, is that WP is about the collective impact and is so much greater than the sum of its parts.

About the author

Dr Lauren Bellaera is Chief Impact and Strategy Officer for The Brilliant Club and holds a teaching position at the Institute of Education, UCL. Lauren is currently collaborating on a TASO research project validating questionnaire scales for widening participation and student success outcomes.