What people think of as widening participation policy has traditionally been officially place-blind. Indeed, a lot of historic activity in this space has been about discouraging a subset of school leavers from applying to their local college or university in favour of a more prestigious option.
Yet much of the practice of widening participation is concerned with place. “Lower tariff” institutions have historically had a much larger proportion of their student body from their local area, shaping the character and demographics of their student intake accordingly. Across the UK universities are held accountable for the numbers of students they recruit from low-participation or deprived postcodes – but without significant reference to the advantages or disadvantages they have of proximity to those postcodes, or the situation of those postcodes or areas in their wider geographical context.
Likewise, policy that is attentive to place and the extent to which places are equipped to thrive and have access to the skills needed for investment and new business is notionally agnostic about the social background of those acquiring or mobilising those skills. But it’s obvious that “upskilling and reskilling”, in the language of economic regeneration, in practice means extending participation in higher-level education. To bring the policy analysis and practice of both together, explicitly, could be very powerful.
