{"id":1021,"date":"2011-02-08T23:08:45","date_gmt":"2011-02-08T22:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=1021"},"modified":"2011-02-10T23:09:17","modified_gmt":"2011-02-10T22:09:17","slug":"university-of-the-first-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=1021","title":{"rendered":"University of the first chance?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/platform\/\" >Teens studying at\u00a0the OU <\/a>is being promoted\u00a0by the OU but it wasn\u2019t always that way. Originally the OU was for over-21s only and there was some concern about allowing younger people to study through the OU. However, after the age of majority was lowered to 18 and when the Minister of Education, Margaret Thatcher, promoted the idea, a pilot group of younger students were permitted to study. They were the subject of close study in order to see if younger people should be encouraged. One of those who worked on the project was Alan Woodley, pictured. Over time attitudes towards younger students have changed and now they are welcomed.<a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/woodley.bmp\" ><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1022\" title=\"woodley\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/woodley.bmp\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Teens studying at\u00a0the OU is being promoted\u00a0by the OU but it wasn\u2019t always that way. Originally the OU was for over-21s only and there was some concern about allowing younger people to study through the OU. However, after the age of majority was lowered to 18 and when the Minister of Education, Margaret Thatcher, promoted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-methods-history-of-the-ou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1021"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1024,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021\/revisions\/1024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}