University News Last updated 08 January 2015
A £22 million programme to encourage young people from poorer backgrounds to consider going to university suggests lessons have been learned from the success of the Aimhigher West Midlands initiative, through which universities and colleges in the region have reached out to nearly 100,000 teenagers.
The award from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) includes £1,140,000 to the newly expanded Aimhigher West Midlands, comprising 12 higher education providers and every state-funded school and college in the West Midlands.
The original partnership, comprising Birmingham City University, Aston University, the University of Birmingham and University College Birmingham, has been self-funded since the current Government controversially axed national funding in 2011.
Three years on, Aimhigher West Midlands has secured funding to become one of a series of networks funded by HEFCE as part of a £22 million National Networks for Collaborative Outreach initiative. Aimhigher West Midlands will receive a total of £1,140,000 over the two years 2014/15 and 2015/16.
Professor Bashir Makhoul, Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Birmingham City University said: "University is a complete irrelevance for far too many young people, for whom in some cases the subject doesn’t ever figure in conversations at home. That's why showing teenagers and younger children what higher education can do for them is crucial and transformative. This funding recognises what we in the West Midlands have never ceased comprehending – that outreach and joined up partnership working with so-called 'rival' universities is a sizeable part of the answer to a complex social and economic issue."
Gail Rothnie, Head of Outreach at the University of Birmingham, said: "The University of Birmingham is committed to its Outreach work with students from year 6 primary through the secondary school phase inspiring them to make informed choices about future progression to Higher Education. Students from our programmes progress to many different universities, not just the University of Birmingham, and our involvement in the Aimhigher West Midlands partnership is further commitment to our support of progression to the sector in general."
The funding from HEFCE will help to extend Aimhigher West Midlands educational outreach work across the region by becoming a network of 12 higher education providers and every state-funded school and college in the West Midlands.
The new partnership aims to raise the aspirations and attainment of the region’s most economically deprived young people, with figures showing that students from the most advantaged areas remain nearly 10 times more likely to take up a place at a top university.
Since the government’s 2011 abolition of funding for Aimhigher, the West Midlands initiative has engaged with 160 schools and colleges and over 8,000 young people, providing intensive support to more than 2,000 of the most deprived pupils. This is in addition to the 80,000 or more young people the four universities work with each year as part of their individual outreach work.
Mike Thompson, Aimhigher West Midlands’ Coordinator, said: "In some parts of the West Midlands, fewer than one in 10 young people enter university. We want to change that, so that any young person with the potential to benefit from a university education has the support they need to aim higher."
The Aimhigher West Midlands partnership covers an area in which 66 per cent of schools and colleges have high proportions of pupils considered least likely to access higher education – nationally the figure is 29 per cent.