2018 in review

A year ago today we officially became Causeway Education – introducing our new name to mark becoming a charity and to acknowledge that we do more than just get young people to university.

To mark our birthday, here we take a moment to reflect on everything that's happened this past year.

The year in review

In April we hosted our very first conference, Partnerships for Change, in London, welcoming over 150 friends and colleagues for a busy day's discussion of how organisations can work together to improve outcomes for young people.

Highlights included MoneySavingExpert Martin Lewis' passionate keynote on the state of student finance and the chance to hear perspectives from schools and colleges, voices often missed from the debate about widening participation.

You can read a full wrap-up of the conference, and watch recordings of all the sessions, on our blog.

All year we've been busy in schools and colleges around the country, working with teachers and students to help make sure that all young people have fair access to their best possible future.

We've mentored more than 1,000 students this year, and in June we caught up with Sarah Baylis, one of our Progression Specialists, to see what a day out and about in school is like, when she wrote about her visit to the Isle of Wight on our blog.

Along with our charity colleagues, we've been campaigning to make sure that university access is as fair as it can be for all young people, as the Augar review nears its completion.

In November we issued a call on the Government to protect funding for widening participation to make sure that the great work and progress that's been made to close the Access Gap doesn't get wasted, and met with the then-Universities Minister Sam Gyimah MP to talk about the importance of protecting widening participation.

The year in feedback

We often get feedback from people we work with. It's always useful to hear from those who matter what they think of what we do - and especially so when it's positive! Here are some of our highlights from the work we've done this year, starting with some reflections from our Progression Specialists when we asked them to share a personal highlight from their year's mentoring.

“We really do feel that you have made a significant difference to the students’ progress and confidence. [Student] was with us just now and you have clearly had a real impact on his future plans. The students you have worked with are very lucky indeed.”

— Jill Eatherden, Access Champion, Bay House School, Hampshire

“I would just like to thank you. You’ve done everything you could to help with my personal statement. My teachers love it…God bless you…You are a role model as you selflessly aid people to get into their future careers.”

— Mentee on our Academic Apprenticeship programme

“It made me think of options that I haven’t thought of before, making me calmer in terms of my university options.”

— Student who attended one of our Smart Start student workshops, run in partnership with Allen & Overy

The year in stats

As well as the wonderful feedback, we're a research-led organisation so whenever we've been out and about we've been busy collecting evidence to help us understand the impact and value of our work, and how it helps to change young people's lives.

There's some real evidence of promise, and as we work through the data we'll share what we find over the coming weeks. But the basic stats about what we achieved last year are pretty impressive on their own:

• We delivered more than 60 workshops and training days with teachers from more than 100 schools.

• 99% of people who attended our Access Champions training days in 2018 reported that they had left with clear ideas about strategies they could implement to improve systems in their school/college.

• Our Progression Specialists held over 4600 mentoring sessions with more than 1100 students.

• More than a third of students we mentored said they were more likely to go to university after completing their mentoring sessions.

• More than 3,400 students worked on their personal statement using OSCAR.

So while there's still much work to do to make sure all young people have fair access to education, we're already making a real, measurable difference to young people's lives.

We'd like to say a huge thank you to everybody who helped make 2018 such a success - we really enjoyed working with you. We have great plans to do even more and even better this year, and we're looking forward to greater success in 2019.

Our “new approach to regulating access and participation in Higher Education”

Following consultations in the autumn, the Office for Students has released its new approach to access and participation in Higher Education. We can’t fault the OfS for the scale of its ambition, seeking to drive progress towards four long-range objectives:

1. To eliminate the gap in entry rates at higher-tariff providers between the most and least represented groups by 2038-39.

2. To eliminate the unexplained gap in non-continuation between most and least represented groups by 2024-25, and to eliminate the absolute gap (the gap caused by both structural and unexplained factors) by 2030-31.

3. To eliminate the unexplained gap in degree outcomes (1sts or 2:1s) between white students and black students by 2024-25, and to eliminate the absolute gap (the gap caused by both structural and unexplained factors) by 2030-31.

4. To eliminate the gap in degree outcomes (1sts or 2:1s) between disabled students and non-disabled students by 2024-25.

Access in detail

At first sight, aiming to eliminate the access gap between advantaged and disadvantaged 18- and 19-year-old students appears a lofty ambition. On further inspection, the intermediate steps are not unattainable.

If we start by looking at reducing the gap in participation between the most and least represented, for 18- and 19-year-olds the OfS' target is to reduce the gap from its current ratio of 5:1 to a ratio of 3:1 by 2024-25.

When expressed in a slightly different way, this means decreasing the gap between quintile 5 and quintile 1 from 10.2% (as it was in 2016-17) to 8.9% by 2024-25 – a shift of 1.3%.

On the face of it, this seems feasible; the question is whether the sector as a whole – universities, third-sector organisations and other supporters – can build momentum and sustain progress.

New ambitions need new approaches

But, when viewed over time, a number of key access gaps have remained stubbornly entrenched. As the chart opposite, from the DfE’s most recent report into widening participation, shows, the gap between the proportion of students that received Free School Meals going to university and those that did not has shown few signs of progress since data became available in 2008-9.

So to meet that bold target from the OfS, it’s clear therefore that we need bold new approaches. Piecemeal activities for small groups of students are unlikely to deliver the step-change required. Instead, we need innovative models that work with large cohorts and effect long-term structural changes in schools and colleges, such as our Access Champions programme.

As the OfS requires, Access Champions is focused on outcomes rather than outputs. The programme drives progression rates up for whole cohorts by helping build better systems for HE progression within schools and colleges. We train and empower a senior teacher in the school or college to improve practice in six key areas, including the use of data and the training of other staff members. The sustained programme allows universities to build strategic relationships with schools and colleges and to ensure that existing outreach activities are targeted effectively.

Currently running in regions across England and starting shortly in Glasgow, Access Champions has garnered significant support from teachers, with early indications showing an uplift in application, offer and acceptance rates at participating schools and colleges.

“Access Champions has encouraged students to take progression seriously”, according to Sandra Griffiths, the Post-16 Learning Leader at St Edmund Campion Catholic School in Erdington, Birmingham, who we’ve been working with over the past twelve months.

At Quarrydale Academy in Nottinghamshire, the Access Champions approach has “completely changed our approach to personal statements and references,” according to Leanne Straw, the academy’s UCAS co-ordinator. Personal statements are now much more focused on specific courses, and led to one applicant, applying for Nursing at Nottingham University, being told by the admissions tutor that their personal statements was “one of the best applications I have ever read”.

Teresa Lamb, who took part in the programme from Brimsham Green school near Bristol, told us that, having identified areas for improvement while on the programme and writing a development plan that outlines the changes to make to address them, tutors now feel “empowered” and are able to focus on emphasising a student’s academic suitability and skills when writing references.

Working at the school level is a different approach to the more common student-level interventions seen in much widening participation, but we believe it’s one that has the chance to make lasting change for large numbers of students, and help meet that ambitious OfS target.

To find out more about Access Champions, please contact [email protected].

Unpicking the UCAS end of cycle report

Dr Michael Englard, our Director of Research and Policy, has been picking through the latest chapter of the UCAS end of cycle report, published today.

The latest instalment of UCAS's end of cycle report shows - at a very broad level - the most recent entry rates for young students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Some quick caveats before we take a look at the numbers. The data looks at entry rates for 18 year old students, so doesn’t tell us about students who might enter Higher Education when older.

The main measure used is our old friend - the Participation of Local Areas classification. This time round, however, POLAR is dressed in a new guise. We are now, in fact, into the fourth iteration of the POLAR - helpfully known as POLAR4.

There have been longstanding debates over the limits of POLAR. The measure shows progression to Higher Education by breaking the UK into small areas - middle layer super output areas or MSOAs for the geeks - and classifying these areas into quintiles. Quintile 1 is the most disadvantaged and Quintile 5 is the most advantaged. The metric is particularly problematic in London where only 13 MSOAs are classified as Quintile 1; Ellen Austin provides an excellent overview of the dangers of using this as a single and definitive measure here.

While POLAR4 might have its problems, it should not be dismissed too casually. It's an officially recognised measure which has been used for over two decades and thus provides some material for important comparisons.

Looking at the latest POLAR data, we can see that the entry for the most disadvantaged quintile has risen very slightly by 0.4% which means that a record 19.7% of Q1 students have been accepted by UCAS to start a course in September 2018.

This small uplift shouldn't mask some large and persistent inequalities. Young people from the most advantaged areas are 2.3 times more likely to start an undergraduate course compared to their less privileged counterparts. At higher tariff institutions the gap widens considerably with young people from quintile 5 now 5.74 times more likely to study at more selective institutions than those from quintile 1.

While this report is helpful in indicating some broad patterns, it is not until January when UCAS will publish this data split by free school meals status and ethnic groups that we will be able to make more nuanced judgements.

Given this first tranche of data, however, it is clear that urgent work remains to be done if we are going to start making real inroads into the problem of fair access.