Guest Lecturer - Alice Davies

This post will discuss Alice Davies lecture on widening access to higher education in Wales. Alice belongs to the South West Wales Reaching Wider Consortium, who define widening access as "increasing opportunities for people from a diverse range of backgrounds. The aim of the consortium is to provide equality through increasing the amount of people from under represented social groups inside higher education. These groups are: - People from specific black and ethnic minority communities - People with disabilities - People from low income families - People from Communities First wards - Looked After Children and Care leavers The main areas where these groups exist and Reaching Wider target are called communities first areas. Communities first areas are the 100 most deprived areas in wales as derived from the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation (2000). This index looks at income, health, employment, housing, education and access to services. The Communities First programme is designed to encourage partnership within communities, "Communities First can enable and encourages Public Sector, Third Sector and Private sector organisations to work together to achieve common goals." Welsh Government (2012). So in turn the benefit received by the individual is also felt in the economy, as the community works together becoming more economically productive. Alice then went on to discuss a body named HEFCW - the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales. Their job is to allocate monetary resources in all aspects of higher education in Wales, e.g: - Fee planning (Justification as to why the amount of money is viably charged in fees, and also what the money is to be reinvested in.) - Widening Access Premium (the educational institute receives funding if students come from community first situations) - Widening Access strategy funding - Reaching Wider. HEFCW (2006) describe reaching wider as "a long-term widening access initiative. It aims to improve learning skills and educational aspirations to enable more school-aged pupils and adults to study at university or college." Alice then went on to explain about the regional partnerships that are in place between; North and Mid Wales, South East Wales and finally South West Wales. We are part of the South West partnership which includes Swansea, Pembrokeshire, Camarthenshire and Neath - Port Talbot. Within the partnership are Further Educational institutions, Higher Educational institutions, Careers Wales, Local Authorities and Communities First. The partnerships have been put in place to encourage students to take up higher education, combat social disadvantages and improve achievement. Widening access seems like a concept of equality, and has been allowing disadvantaged students entry to higher education from a number of years, however widening access to the upper echelon of universities seems hard to achieve from such social deprivation. In summary the policy allows for equality, but question the quality of the higher education achieved at the end of it all. Overall this lecture provided a good insight into what needs to be done to provide equality to all social groups in getting to higher education. References: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/housingandcommunity/regeneration/communitiesfirst/?lang=en. Welsh Government. (2012) http://www.hefcw.ac.uk/documents/news/press_releases/2006%20press%20releases/23.05.06%20reaching%20out%20to%20raise%20aspirations.pdf HEFCW (2006)