By Dr Richard Boffey, Head of AccessHE, the widening participation division of London Higher.
Plans for reform of the higher education sector announced by the Labour Government in November last year were big on vision, but light on detail.
The sector would therefore do well to put forward ideas before the government gets there first, especially in relation to the first of the five proposed areas of reform: widening higher education access and participation. The Government has repeatedly called this its number one higher education policy priority, albeit one on which it has just as consistently demurred when pressed on the question of how exactly ‘expanding access and improving outcomes for disadvantaged students’ is to be achieved.
In several other respects, widening participation is in the grips of policy paralysis. The implementation of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) has been further delayed and funding for Uni Connect, the national, higher education-led collaborative outreach programme, hangs in the balance. The Office for Students (OfS) has begun to sketch out a new phase in its regulatory approach to equality of opportunity across England but has restricted itself to discussing principles. In any case, many of the changes this will entail will not materialise before the end of the current activity cycle.
Against this policy void, there is troubling new evidence of educational inequalities widening and progress on widening access to higher education stalling. The percentage of Free School Meals (FSM)-eligible pupils progressing to higher education fell for the first time since records began last year. Research into how the cost of living is impacting higher education participation, conducted by London Higher’s AccessHE division in 2024, came to the worrying conclusion that in London enthusiasm for higher education study may be waning as cost pressures mount – something that is not helped by falling real-terms maintenance allowances and the challenges of balancing study with part-time work. This is a concerning development since, historically, London has long been the pace-setter when it comes to widening access for socio-economically disadvantaged students.
The Government has promised more detailed reform proposals, including on access reforms, by summer. Whilst it continues to talk up the role of higher education in its opportunity mission, there is both a narrowing window in which to influence Bridget Phillipson and her ministerial team’s thinking and a growing sense of urgency about the task of breaking down barriers to opportunity itself.
What might an opportunity vision for higher education look like?
Above all else, we in the sector must advocate for an integrated and inclusive vision of widening participation. Integrated, because it meshes with the wider regional and national infrastructure that exists to scaffold education and skills pathways: initiatives such as the Government’s Youth Guarantee and associated place-based trailblazers, the Careers & Enterprise Company-led Careers Hubs, and Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs), amongst others. Inclusive, because the change it drives towards is one that makes higher education genuinely open to all who have the ability and desire to participate. This is distinct from a vision for widening participation that revolves around tackling inequalities of access between groups, without tackling exclusionary structures such as accommodation or constraints on choice of subject or provider.
That is not to say that specific access or student success targets for the sector do not have their place. Indeed, targets can serve as important milestones for change (to use the Government’s language) in higher education’s contribution to an overarching opportunity mission. For a Government that is promising a decade of national renewal, committing to significantly reduce the ethnicity awarding gap or the access gap for FSM-eligible pupils, or double rates of higher education participation for care leavers (as proposed by the recent Independent Review of Children’s Social Care) would intuitively resonate.
But these targets must connect to local-level objectives that respond to the needs of specific places and communities. For London Higher and our members in the capital, this could mean linking a national awarding gaps target to more localised work to improve labour market progression for black, disabled and care-experienced Londoners, as a stated priority within the London LSIP. Or it could mean linking a national FSM access target to parallel efforts at rolling out a city-wide, modular higher education offer, so that adult participation in London higher education improves in tandem with young participation.
In this inclusive, integrated model, students – both current and prospective – must have a role in shaping their higher education experience. A genuinely co-created model of higher education is undeniably ambitious, but also integral to ensuring the sector can accommodate a diversity of lived experiences and give students agency over the opportunities afforded to them by it (in turn improving their sense of belonging). Now is the moment to place student co-design and consultation at the heart of widening access and participation work. Whilst this would have benefits across all English regions, it would be transformative in London, where diversity of the student body has long been the norm and is now giving way to hyper-diversity.
These are just two examples of how to join up thinking on the future of widening participation with parallel policy priorities – whether that be skills (as in the former example) or civic participation (in the case of the latter). We as a sector can take this thinking much further, with the aim not only of agreeing on targets and priorities but also re-envisioning what participation in higher education means for individuals and for society, and what that says about higher education’s place in mission-driven government.
The opportunity mission can yet be an opportunity for higher education – if only we seize it.
London Higher will be exploring what a higher education-led strand of the ‘opportunity mission’ could look like at our AccessHE division’s annual conference on 12 February 2025 at the University of Westminster. Book your place to be part of the conversation here.