Prelims

Half Title Page

The Business of Widening Participation

Endorsement Page

The contention of this lively collection of essays is that WP has become part of the ‘normal business’ of HE providers during the past 25 years. This is a lively account of the drivers of WP since the Dearing Review and the implementation of the social justice policies since that time. There is extensive use of policy documents from Government bodies such as HEFCE and OFFA as well as the academic literature, enabling a focus on the sometimes discordant relationship between Government, still the primary funder of undergraduate HE in England and autonomous, but dependent, universities. This highly readable book will be of great interest and value to policy makers, practitioners, researchers and historians of widening participation as well as to the many thousands of graduates who have benefitted from opportunity not afforded to those who went before.

Professor Sir Les Ebdon CBE DL, Former Vice- Chancellor of the University of Bedfordshire and Former Director of Fair Access to Higher Education. Chair of NEON (the National Educational Opportunity Network)

This is an exciting, must-read, timely and thoughtful collation of historical and contemporary insights of what it means to increase participation in a neoliberal market system. A stellar cast of policy and academic voices make sense of the dynamics of markets, businesses, student choice and widening participation. The book is essential for those already working in English HE in policy or academic roles related to widening participation. Those in continental European systems and elsewhere who are wondering what the outcomes of shifts from public to market funded higher education might mean must look no further than this book to understand the impact on students and providers.

Professor Anna Mountford-Zimdars is academic Director of the Centre for Social Mobility at the University of Exeter

Title Page

The Business of Widening Participation: Policy, Practice and Culture

EDITED BY

COLIN MCCAIG

Sheffield Hallam University, UK

JON RAINFORD

The Open University, UK

AND

RUTH SQUIRE

Sheffield Hallam University, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2022

Copyright © 2022 Emerald Publishing Limited.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80043-050-1 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80043-049-5 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80043-051-8 (Epub)

Contents

List of Tables and Figures

Tables

Figures

Abbreviations

Acronyms

Organisations

About the Editors

Colin McCaig is a Professor of Higher Education Policy at Sheffield Hallam University. He has written extensively on widening participation policy in the context of marketised higher education systems. He has 20 years’ experience evaluating government-funded education programmes. Key recent publications include The Marketisation of English Higher Education: A Policy Analysis of a Risk-based System (Emerald Publishing Limited, 2018); Equality and Differentiation in Marketised Higher Education: A New Level Playing Field? (co-edited with Bowl and Hughes, Palgrave, 2018); Who Are We Widening Participation For? (BERA Research Intelligence No. 143, 2020); ‘Higher Education, Widening Access and Market Failure: Towards a Dual Pricing Mechanism in England’, Social Science, 2019 (with Nic Lightfoot).

Jon Rainford is an Associate Lecturer and Honorary Associate in Access, Open and Cross-curricular Innovation at The Open University and is an independent widening participation consultant. He has over 12 years experience of working with marginalised groups in education and completed his PhD at Staffordshire University in 2019 which focused on widening participation policy and practice. He has written numerous publications on widening access and has a particular interest in the way technology can be embedded in a post-pandemic world and the role creative methods can play in evaluation.

Ruth Squire is a researcher and former widening participation practitioner, with 15 years’ experience in delivering and evaluating widening participation activity in higher education and the third sector. She has published articles on practitioner-led research, working-class student representation and on evaluation practices, and she has a particular interest in practitioner-led evaluation and policy enactment. Her current research focuses on the role of the third sector in widening participation policy and on networks and expertise in policymaking.

About the Contributors

Julian Crockford is Chief Programmes Officer at the Villiers Park Educational Trust and Associate Director of the Specialist Evidence Evaluation and Research service. Prior to taking on these roles, he set up and managed the Widening Participation Research and Evaluation Unit at the University of Sheffield. He is currently an EdD candidate and is completing his thesis, which focuses on the epistemology of Theory of Change approaches in widening participation evaluation.

Judith Darnell has worked in primary, further and higher education and has published book chapters and journal articles on a range of subjects. Her interests include parental involvement, educational theory, outdoor learning, sociology and the further education sector. She currently teaches and course leads the Educational Practice Foundation Degree at Tresham College in Kettering.

John Selby, a sociologist, taught for many years at Coventry University, ultimately becoming the university’s Head of Educational Partnerships. He joined the Higher Education Funding Council for England in 1999 and served as Director for Widening Participation from 2006 to 2010. Following retirement, he chaired the Advisory Group of the Office for Fair Access, became a Trustee of the Brightside Trust, and a Visiting Scholar at Sheffield Hallam University.

Graeme Slater is a Doctoral student at the University of Manchester Institute of Education and Head of Action Planning at the Bloomsbury Institute London. He has worked in higher education professional services for nearly 15 years including five years spent in alternative provider institutions. He specialised in the study of private providers while sitting the MA in Higher and Professional Education at the UCL Institute of Education and has represented the sector as a member of the UCAS Council and as a chair of practitioner groups for Independent HE and Guild HE.

Peter Wolstencroft is a Deputy Director at Liverpool Business School (part of Liverpool John Moores University). He worked for many years within further education before moving into higher education. He is the author of numerous books, chapters and articles exploring teaching and education in all its many forms.

Acknowledgements

The editors would like to thank the colleagues, friends, acquaintances, partners and family members who have generously given their thoughts and feedback on previous iterations of chapters of this book and the ideas within. This input has been fundamental in shaping our ideas and informed the book as a whole. We would particularly like to thank the widening participation practitioners who completed the survey that has informed several chapters of this book, as well as those who commented on our early findings. Jon and Ruth would also like to acknowledge the generosity of the participants in sharing their experiences and stories as part of wider research projects that informed their respective chapters. Finally, the editors would like to thank all the contributors for their valuable insights, perspectives and timely submission and revision of their chapters.