The best possible version of Westminster and devolved governments’ post-compulsory education policy is the expansion of higher education opportunity. In England, the lifelong loan entitlement, a boost for higher technical education and apprenticeships, and new opportunities for digitally enhanced and flexible learning appear to offer the prospect of a greater diversity of options and pathways post-18.

In Wales, the new tertiary education legislation promises a more joined-up post-18 sector . And Scotland will argue it’s always led the way on articulation between FE and HE but as last year’s review of tertiary education and research concluded, there’s space for a longer term vision for colleges and universities.

But the reality is that public funding is constrained across the UK, that policymakers struggle to join up thinking and action between siloed sectors, and that when it comes to education opportunity, culture eats policy for breakfast. And with the Westminster government redefining social mobility, and mooting student number controls and minimum eligibility requirements for degree-level study, there’s some scepticism about whether there is really a sustained commitment to access.

Agenda

9.30 – Welcome and setting the scene with Debbie McVitty, Editor of Wonkhe

9.45 – 10.45 – John Blake in conversation + Q&A

John Blake is the new Director for Fair Access and Participation at the Office for Students and in this opening session, will set out his priorities and agenda for the coming months and years in conversation with Wonkhe’s editor in chief Mark Leach. 

10.45 – 11.30 What are the debates and trends shaping tertiary education participation? 

A more coherent post-compulsory education system should help to tackle longstanding disadvantages – but whose disadvantage and in what form? So much of the discussion about who should be taking what kinds of qualifications is coded, with social class and the needs of left behind places jostling with anxiety about skills shortages and a growing social divide between “liberal” university-educated elites and everyone else. This session will explore the evidence behind the policy debate, and ask how these broader trends are framing access and participation work. 

11.30 – 12.00 Break

12.00 – 13.00 Who are the future students and what’s informing their choices about HE options? 

Post-Covid, Gen Y, always online, always opinionated? Information-rich, time-poor, debt-averse, image-focused? More of the same? First in family? First in community? It’s so easy to generalise about generations, or to assume that experiences and expectations don’t change over time. Knowing who prospective students talk to, what they value, where they get information, and what they expect from higher education is key to providing the kind of experience that suits them. But short of asking every single one of them to – well, fill in a UCAS form – we need to be selective in where we find information like this. This session will point you in the right direction.

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch

14.00 – 14.45 Getting in: Inspiring approaches to access.

14.45 – 15.30 Getting on: student diversity, experience, quality and outcomes.

15.30 – 16.00 Break

16.00 – 17.00 What does social mobility mean in 2022? 

Universities have long positioned themselves as engines of social mobility, but recent data challenges some of the gloss – who you are and what you study is still influencing access to graduate work, higher salaries, and the professions. Westminster higher and further education minister Michelle Donelan has said that “true social mobility” can also be found in alternatives to university, but those alternatives remain untested at scale. Yet a university education is a powerful cultural symbol of aspiration and opportunity – something that all governments recognise and undermine at their peril. Our expert panel will think through what the promise of education has to offer in 2022, and how we should think about the future for social mobility in the UK. 

17.15 Drinks reception and party.