Prelims

Half Title Page

Foundation Years and Why They Matter

Title Page

Foundation Years and Why They Matter

EDITED BY

STEPHEN LEECH

Durham University, UK

AND

Sarah Hale

University of Sheffield, UK

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

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL.

First edition 2025

Editorial Matter and Selection © 2025 Stephen Leech and Sarah Hale.

Individual chapters © 2025 The authors.

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ISBN: 978-1-83797-213-5 (Print)

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Contents

List of Figures and Tables

About the Editors

Stephen Leech is Head of Transitional Education at Durham University. He is an anthropologist and educator and has been teaching in higher education (HE) since 2002. He entered HE as an adult learner via the Durham University Foundation Programme he now leads.

Since 2005, he has worked as a specialist foundation year practitioner, widening participation and supporting fair access to HE. He has developed and delivered a range of academic programmes (and is currently designing a multidisciplinary Bridging Programme) that provide pathways for students from underrepresented groups to access HE. He has also developed a graduate teaching assistant training programme to provide PhD students with experience in working with diverse student groups and to develop the next generation of university lecturers.

He provides expertise in the fields of widening participation, fair access, and social mobility and in developing strategy for the engagement of underrepresented groups within HE. He is Chair of the Foundation Year Network, the UK’s national practitioner network for foundation-level provision. He is also an Executive Board member and Trustee of Advance Learning Partnership, a North-East Multi-Academy Trust providing outstanding primary and secondary education to some of the UK most disadvantaged children.

Sarah Hale is a Senior University Teacher at the University of Sheffield, and since 2014 has been Programme Director for the university’s integrated foundation year provision for mature students. Prior to this, she specialised in teaching mature part-time students, at Sheffield and, from 2006 to 2011, at Birkbeck, University of London. She began her own first degree, in Politics, as a 29-year-old single parent after spending 10 years working as a cleaner, a checkout operator, and a cook in a care home. She enjoyed university so much that she stayed for a decade, completing an MA and a PhD, and publishing research on the Labour Party and political discourse.

She is a Founding Editor (and currently Lead Editor) of the Journal of the Foundation Year Network, a peer-reviewed online journal of foundation year research and pedagogy, founded in 2018. With a voluntary sector background in political communication, lobbying and campaigning, she is Policy Officer at the Foundation Year Network, promoting high quality, life-changing foundation year provision and supporting those who work to provide it.

About the Contributors

Lewis A. Baker is a Senior Lecturer in Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Surrey. He has an academic background in Physics, Mathematical Biology, and Biophysical Chemistry and most recently completed an MA in Education. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Chartered Science Teacher.

Anna Barney is a Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of Southampton and Director of the Engineering, Physics and Mathematics Foundation Year. She was a founder member of the Foundation Year Network.

Lucinda Becker is Professor of Pedagogy and Director of the Arts and Humanities Foundation Year at the University of Reading. Having been a mature undergraduate herself, she has a keen interest in supporting foundation students at university.

Gabriella Cagliesi is a Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex Business School, specialising in applied economics and quantitative analysis. She is an appointed member of the Research and Evaluation Committee of the Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education.

Mark Clark is the Course Director of the BSc Business and Management Studies degree and Convenor of the Foundation Year Business and Management modules at the University of Sussex Business School. He has worked in further and higher education for over 25 years.

Matthew J. Craven has 19 years’ experience in university teaching and led the foundation years in Computing, Engineering, and Mathematics at the University of Plymouth for eight years until January 2024. He is currently Associate Head of School for Undergraduate Education and an author of two best-selling textbooks in Engineering Mathematics.

Ellie Davison is the Director of Foundation Year Studies at the University of Lincoln. With an early career as a molecular geneticist, she cultivated her pedagogic expertise as an ‘outstanding’ secondary school science teacher. She received the 2024 Biochemical Society Teaching Award and is a National Teaching Fellow.

Thomas Hobson is Director of Scholarship and Professional Practice in the Science Foundation Year at the University of Lincoln. Specialising in Mathematics, he supports early career HE Mathematics educators through his work with the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications. Before joining the university, he taught in the Further Education sector.

Jayne Hopkins is the Director of Teaching and Learning and Physics Specialist in the University of Lincoln Science Foundation Year and a founding member of the Science Foundation Year. The department was awarded the Advance HE ‘Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence’ in 2019.

Nayyar Jaan Hussain is a Lecturer in Criminology at London South Bank University and formerly worked on the Foundation Pathway and Prison Project Initiative at the University of Westminster. She began her doctoral research in 2017 and has worked with foundation and undergraduate students since then.

Lee Elliot Major, OBE, is Britain’s First Professor of Social Mobility, based at the University of Exeter, and former CEO of the Sutton Trust. His latest book Equity in Education: Levelling the Playing Field of Learning (2023) is published by John Catt.

Stuart Peck is a Lecturer at the Centre for Education and Teaching Innovation, where he teaches on the Foundation Year Pathways. He also teaches at Westminster Law School on the Legal Practice course. Recently, he completed his PhD on Legal (Higher) Education and Social Justice.

Alex Pryce is Foundation Year Course Director at the University of Cambridge, where she oversaw the development of the programme. She has a background in English literature and has worked in Public Relations and widening participation. She is a Fellow of Homerton College.

Miriam Schwiening spent over 20 years teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) on the Warwick International Foundation Programme and worked as the EAP Coordinator on the programme. She currently teaches on the MA TESOL at the University of Warwick and designs and delivers teacher education programmes for English language teachers.

Jenny M. Sharp has nearly 30 years’ experience in teaching, including foundation year and BSc (Hons) Mathematics with Education, and working with schools. She is passionate about student welfare and is Senior Tutor for the School of Engineering, Computing, and Mathematics at the University of Plymouth. She is an LMS Holgate Session leader.

Carol Spencely is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Surrey. Her experience in immunology research and researcher development fuels her passion for teaching in higher education, resulting in her team winning a National Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence.

Amy Stickels is Director for Academic Development and Learning Enhancement (Associate Professor) for Warwick Foundation Studies at the University of Warwick. She was a secondary schoolteacher in the UK for 16 years before moving to teach international foundation year students in universities, which she has done since 2017.

David W. Stoten was Programme Leader for the Foundation Programme in Business and Management at Northumbria University until his retirement in July 2024. Before entering academia, he taught in the Sixth Form College sector.

Anna Tranter is an Assistant Professor at the International Foundation Programme, University of Warwick. She has been teaching and researching with international foundation students since 2016.

Robert Walsha is Associate Director (Learning Development) in the Department of Library and Learning Services at the University of Surrey. He has worked in student learning development for over 25 years and was instrumental in establishing a full programme- and subject-integrated model of learning development for Surrey’s foundation programmes.

Dawn Whitton is Director of Education for Management and Marketing at Durham University and previously worked at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University. She is a member of the Foundation Year Network and has worked in higher education since 2006.

Foreword

Lee Elliot Major

University of Exeter, UK

It’s fair to say that foundation years have got a bad rap in recent years. At its annual conference in 2018, the University and College Union framed tuition fees for foundation years as a ‘poverty tax’ and accused universities of ‘selling these courses to students while generating huge revenues’. Recent newspaper exclusives meanwhile have accused some foundation year courses for offering back door entry to poorly qualified international students – sullying the reputation of the entire foundation years sector.

Fuelled by fears that the proliferation of foundation years has been driven solely by maximising profits providing little educational value to students, the government has made the unprecedented decision to cap fees for these courses, substantially cutting their funding. Never has such a small but important strand of our university access efforts been subject to such misleading and damaging myths.

This book sets the record straight. Many foundation years transform lives. They enable thousands of people who would not otherwise have had the opportunity to not only access university, but to thrive and succeed there. They are one of the few approaches to widening degree access that we know works; studies have shown that most foundation year students progress to full degrees, performing as well as other students. They enable mature students to secure second chances in life; they overcome the many barriers faced by neurodivergent learners. As these chapters show, they can act as sources of diversity, centres of impact, and sites of innovation.

Foundation years can act as powerful vehicles of social justice. Over a one-year course, subject and academic skills specialists have time to equip students with the educational, cultural, and social capital to flourish in some of the world’s most intimidating and prestigious academic institutions. At the same time, they disrupt the damaging deficit narratives that frame some students as inferior and in need of mending and fitting in.

What is also true is that foundation years have witnessed an unparalleled boom across the academic sector. Number of entrants to them rose by over 700% in a decade, from 8,470 in 2011, to 69,325 in 2021. This rapid expansion occurred with no national standardisation of the foundation year sector, either in content or academic levels. What was certainly required was greater regulation of higher education’s ‘wild west’ to ensure that it continued to transform lives rather than budgets. Instead, the knee-jerk policy response has been to tar all foundation courses with the same brush. What adds to this tragedy, is that it comes at a time when social mobility is in decline and prospects are worsening for applicants from under-resourced backgrounds.

I’ve had the privilege of meeting foundation year students. In many ways, they are typical of other students flourishing in our universities. But what makes them extra special is that they had overcome incredibly difficult circumstances to secure their cherished degree places – and this has only been made possible by the year of extra study they had completed.

My hope is that the high-quality, genuinely transformative foundation years highlighted in this book will also find ways to overcome their own difficulties, following what can only be seen as an act of senseless vandalism.