{"id":2583,"date":"2016-03-23T17:59:19","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T16:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=2583"},"modified":"2016-03-23T17:59:19","modified_gmt":"2016-03-23T16:59:19","slug":"government-set-miss-higher-education-access-targets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/education-languages-health\/government-set-miss-higher-education-access-targets\/","title":{"rendered":"Access to higher education: &#8216;it&#8217;s not just for 18-year-olds&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Government is on course to miss targets to\u00a0open\u00a0up\u00a0access to higher education, according to new research. And &#8220;they cannot afford to focus their efforts solely on 18 year-olds.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Government has ambitious targets for widening participation in by 2020. It aims to\u00a0double the number\u00a0of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds going into Higher Education.<\/p>\n<p>But research by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smf.co.uk\/\">Social Market Foundation<\/a> think tank says it&#8217;s on course to miss those targets, finding significant differences\u00a0between institutions\u2019 intake of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.<\/p>\n<p>The research has been published in the <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.smf.co.uk\/widening-participation\/\">Widening Participation<\/a><\/em>\u00a0report and is supported by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\">The Open University<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unialliance.ac.uk\/\">University Alliance<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Vice-Chancellor of The Open University, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/peterhorrocks\">Peter Horrocks<\/a>, said: \u201cThe government\u2019s ambition to encourage more disadvantaged students into higher education is to be welcomed, however, current efforts fail to take into account the vital role part-time and lifelong study has to play in driving social mobility.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As this report makes clear, if ministers are serious about encouraging these groups of our society\u00a0into studying at a higher level, they cannot afford to focus their efforts solely on 18 year-olds, as has\u00a0previously been the case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;More than a third of such students entering the English university system\u00a0last year were mature. These individuals make a huge contribution to our society and economy, and\u00a0it is in the national interest to make sure this is recognised in any future policy developments.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The report found that there has been some progress towards these targets, but if current trends continue, it won\u2019t be enough to meet them.<\/p>\n<p>It also\u00a0found significant differences between institutions, with many taking fewer\u00a0pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds than six years ago and others only showing very small\u00a0increases.<\/p>\n<p>The issues raised in the report were the subject of a special round-table event held in central London today, attended by the Universities and Science Minister, Jo Johnson.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.smf.co.uk\/widening-participation\/\">A full breakdown of the research findings can be found in the report.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Government is on course to miss targets to\u00a0open\u00a0up\u00a0access to higher education, according to new research. And &#8220;they cannot afford to focus their efforts solely on 18 year-olds.&#8221; The Government has ambitious targets for widening participation in by 2020. It aims to\u00a0double the number\u00a0of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds going into Higher Education. But research by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[993,1065,1699,1904,2054,2414],"class_list":["post-2583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-languages-health","tag-government","tag-higher-education","tag-peter-horrocks","tag-research","tag-social-market-foundation","tag-widening-participation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}