Collaboration has been an essential component in the development of widening participation – even before “widening participation” became the default terminology for access to higher education work.
The forerunners to access to higher education programmes and the national access initiative Aimhigher were built on collaboration. Core aspects of access and participation activity, including summer schools and even evaluation, were started in proof-of-concept collaborations and spread to the wider sector. One of the core modes of current national delivery, UniConnect, is based on partnership. Yet 2025 will apparently see the publication of guidance from the Office for Students (OfS) on partnership working. Is it really necessary?
Potential debates about the role of an HE regulator aside, I think it is – particularly when it comes to collaboration between providers and the third sector. Having spent four years studying the roles of third sector organisations in widening participation policy and practice, and an unnamed number of years in universities, private sector, and third sector widening participation organisations, I can see that there are things we are not getting right.
