Despite years of widening participation strategies, there is evidence of growing divergences in educational opportunities and outcomes in every country where data is available.
A recent report says young people in Wales experience the worst educational outcomes in the UK. This is evidenced by Wales’ “high and increasing share of young people who are not in education, employment or training…[and] low levels of higher education participation”.
Yet to respond to the digital and green transitions, Wales will require ever more people with qualifications between levels 4 (such as a higher apprenticeship) and 6 (such as a bachelor’s degree). Currently, a little over 40 per cent meet this mark.
As Wales embeds its groundbreaking new regulator for the whole tertiary education system, known as Medr, it must consider how well prepared its tertiary education system is to meet the Welsh Government’s aspiration for “A More Equal Wales”. The Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP)’s new report, Understanding inequity in Tertiary Education in Wales and Widening Participation in Tertiary Education, is a valuable contribution to that debate.
The report reconfirms that inequalities across society are highly correlated with unequal access to education. And participation in higher levels of education is strongly correlated with factors such as parental occupation, race/ethnicity, disability, deprivation and gender – often embedded and reproduced by societal structures, including education.
What the report brings out strikingly is that all the remedies that have been attempted across Great Britain and Ireland have had only mixed success. Poor data and the absence of agreed definitions, leading to inadequate evaluation, are common problems, explaining – but not excusing – failures by governments and institutions.
Widening participation plans are vital, but they must reflect national targets, be rigorously monitored and have real bite. The annual fees and access agreements that Welsh universities are currently obliged to produce, setting out their approach to fair access, are little more than expressions of weak aspirations, with no consequences for failure. People criticise performance funding, but without using funding as a driver of reform, the level of radical reform required will not happen. Consistent definitions of key terms, such as equality of opportunity, will help Medr set and monitor challenging targets with consequences.
But if those targets focus solely on student enrolment, they reinforce an environment, encouraged by the funding system, in which learners are prey for predatory behaviour by better-resourced universities. Targets must also incentivise universities to support students once they are there by encompassing learner outcomes, progression and employability.
Articulation agreements and educational pathways between FE and HE have become an increasingly common approach to widening participation internationally. Formalising learning pathways at the national level can provide a coherent approach that goes far beyond bilateral agreements between individual institutions, enabling learners to enrol in institutions nearer home – which usually have more flexible delivery approaches, conducive to different personal and working arrangements.
But we should not reinforce a vertically stratified tertiary system by overemphasising HE as the only path to success. FE must be an equivalent alternative, not second best for those who cannot, or don’t wish to, access university. As the OECD has warned, advanced vocational and higher technical qualifications are needed more than ever.
Overemphasis on university access and foundation programmes risks further colonisation of the vocational route by the academic (which may also be a lot more expensive). Given Medr’s remit for research and innovation, it must also recognise the vital role FE plays in knowledge diffusion and raising productive and absorptive capacity in high-tech as well as low-tech sectors.
Adult learners need more attention, too. It is not only the large proportion of young Welsh workers only qualified up to level 3 (A level) who will need to continually upskill, reskill and repurpose their qualifications over their working lives. We need to rethink all learners as lifelong learners.
This is the widening participation agenda of the future. Insufficient demand for the recent pilot Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) scheme in England illustrates that financial incentives will do very little to tackle embedded societal and educational obstacles to participation without making learning and assessment more flexible, such as by removing barriers between full- and part-time study, providing education and training throughout the week and year, and allowing greater customisation of learning.
This relates to the WCPP report’s call for more information about what is available, including financial support. But we need more than signposting. Personal development and access to good education and training begins in preschool. Greater emphasis should be placed on ensuring all school leavers acquire higher-order cognitive, communication and interpersonal skills, alongside specialist knowledge necessary for life and work into the future. These may not be Medr’s issues, but they impact Medr’s responsibilities.
To meet those responsibilities – of establishing a truly integral tertiary education system – it will essential for Medr to provide an educational roadmap to enable learners of all backgrounds and abilities to customise their route towards a chosen career – and back into the education system when the time is right.
Many governments are rethinking their tertiary systems, but Medr is already at the starting gates, and the world is watching. Medr must demonstrate strong strategic leadership, grasping the opportunity to rethink how education and training, as well as research and innovation, works for Welsh society and the economy. Funding, for instance, cannot be allowed to become a dogfight between HE and FE in a tight financial situation.
With this bold approach, Medr can fulfil its mission to widen participation and improve outcomes for all learners regardless of how they enter the system.
Ellen Hazelkorn is joint managing partner at BH Associates education consultants and professor emerita, Technological University Dublin. This is an edited version of a longer article, available here.
