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This paper reports on a longitudinal study in the North of England with 13 educators in schools, colleges and universities during two lockdowns. The project was designed to 'unlock' education by providing spaces to co‐create new ways of thinking about education in light of the Covid‐19 pandemic. Focus groups were conducted with school and college teachers as well as university staff at the end of the first and second English lockdowns, in summer 2020 and spring 2021. An initial analysis identified issues with expectations and communication between educators and executive management as well as a lack of agency of educators, and how participants framed them as impacting on their identity as educators. Therefore, the framework of tactics of intersubjectivity was adopted to explore how educators discursively positioned themselves and others through constructions of similarity and difference, realness and power, and how their professional identities were affected by the experience of working through the pandemic and by those around them. Whilst educators took opportunities to authenticate their identity and reimagine education, their agency was undermined by top‐down governing involving little successful communication, leading to denaturalising and illegitimising experiences for educators. Executive management were perceived as lacking engagement with staff and understanding of the implications of their decisions on them. The findings call for relationship building and recognition of educators' voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Widening participation has opened higher education ( HE) to diverse learners, but in doing so has created challenges negotiating situations of disadvantaged positioning compared with peers conforming more closely to the ideal 'bachelor boy' student. As one of the most financially vulnerable groups of students, lone parents occupy a doubly precarious position negotiating the challenges, including financial constraints, of both university participation and raising children alone. Their experiences of HE participation are particularly important to understand as increasing financial precariousness of both studentship and lone parenthood squeezes them further through concurrent rising university fees and welfare cuts. This paper draws on insights from longitudinal qualitative research with 77 lone mothers in England to explore the negotiation of social and economic risks and rewards involved in their undertaking of a debt-financed higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I use the case of the marketisation of higher education in England to contribute to the growing interest in placing markets, and processes of market making, more centrally within economic geographical research agendas. In particular, my argument focuses on the spatiality of marketisation through the specific case of the introduction of undergraduate student fees in England from 1998 onwards. I argue that the marketisation of English higher education has operated, implicitly at least, with a territorial logic in which students fees are justified through an assumption that the value of a degree from an English university will arise from graduate salary premiums in domestic graduate labour markets. However, I demonstrate how English higher education overflows this territorial framing through the internationalisation of student choice and graduate labour markets in ways that challenge the marketisation process itself. This analysis reveals the hitherto comparatively neglected role of extra-territorial relations in marketisation and the importance of these geographies for the future marketisation of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managing the demand for higher education has been a major concern of successive UK governments over the last 30 years. While initially they sought to increase demand, latterly the emphasis has been on widening participation to include demographic groups among which it has traditionally been low. There had long been an academic and policy interest in the drivers of demand, but an appreciation of the contrasting patterns between different geographical areas was relatively late to emerge. Little research has thus far focused on the extent to which demand within an area is a function of background factors with a spatial dimension. For example, while it is known that demand tends to be lower in deprived areas, it is not well understood what specific features of deprivation cause this. This paper reports the findings of a quantitative study using linear regression modelling to determine which localised factors played a significant role in the demand for higher education between 2004 and 2009 in English local authority areas. It concludes that attainment at 16, the proportion of working-age graduates and the ethnic profile are major explanatory variables, but that the nature of the local employment market also plays a role in explaining changes over time. Coinciding with other significant changes in the education sector, the abolition of the Aimhigher initiative in July 2011 marked the return of demand management back to individual universities, so the importance of spatial patterns in higher education demand are likely to be of renewed importance in coming years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the financial implications of the higher education funding regime to be introduced in English universities in September 2012. The analysis is based on simulated lifetime earnings profiles among graduates, linked to imputed information on parental incomes and institution and course choices. We find that, on average, total gross tuition fees will increase by over £15,000 as a result of the reforms; nevertheless, students will be significantly better off while they study due to the increased generosity of student support. The average graduate will be roughly £8,600 worse off over their lifetime, while universities will, on average, be better off as they are more than able to make up for the loss of substantial amounts of direct public funding through higher fees. The taxpayer is set to lose 33p of every £1 loaned to students (up from 25p under the current system) because of the generosity of the loan repayment terms, although the new regime is still expected to save the taxpayer around £3,000 per graduate overall. The reforms involve a substantial shift in the incidence of the cost of higher education away from the public sector and towards the private sector. In terms of the likely implications for social mobility, our work confirms that the new funding regime is actually more progressive than its predecessor: the poorest 29 per cent of graduates will be better off under the new system, while other graduates will be worse off. Moreover, the richest 16 per cent of graduates will pay back more than they borrow, while others will be subsidised. If prospective students from poorer backgrounds are aware of these facts, then, in theory, the new funding system should not dissuade them from applying to university - and thus it would increase, rather than reduce, social mobility in the long run. However, this will require a lack of debt aversion amongst students from the poorest backgrounds, and the ability for the government and universities to provide students with clear information about the likely costs of going to university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ongoing marketisation of higher education in England can be understood both conceptually – in terms of its ideological commitment to competition and accountability; and practically – in terms of the way that it has altered higher education structurally in a variety of ways. Methods of standardisation and quantification offer validation and reward to institutions through criteria aligned with marketised principles, leading to institutions shaping their operations to suit these forms of justification. Historically, many arts subjects have operated conceptually and organisationally outside the traditional higher education paradigm, and pedagogic approaches and values that are attributable to this subject area could clash with marketised understandings of education, which are becoming more prevalent and influential. This article presents analysis of reflections from creative arts educational practitioners working within higher education institutions in England on explorations of an ontology of the creative arts, as well as experiences of the marketisation process. A series of values relating to the concept of 'the personal', inherent to the creative arts are discussed and an exploration of how these principles clash with the priorities of the marketised educational economy are articulated. The values and principles that are inherent to educators and practitioners working in the creative arts are competing with 'marketised' motives imposed on them by the institutions in which they work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the important role played by higher education in broader skills and economic development policies in England and Scotland. It places the often divergent policy experiments and structural developments in these two countries' higher education systems within an international policy context and explains why England and Scotland are often tackling common problems and challenges in different ways. Scotland's retention of a centralised funding system for higher education, its enthusiasm for a closer integration of higher education with other forms of skills creation and its emphasis on skills utilisation are all leading to greater divergence from England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Entry to speech and language therapy (SLT) undergraduate pre-registration programmes in the UK is usually achieved through qualifications attained at school (e.g. A-levels). A smaller number of people who did not succeed academically at school enter through qualifications achieved post-schooling, e.g. Access to Higher Education courses. This second group of students are attractive recruits to SLT training programmes as they bring different experiences and backgrounds to the programme and to the SLT profession. However, there are no published studies that explore the academic performance or degree and employment outcomes of students who enter university through this route. Aims To investigate the success of non-traditional entry students, specifically those with Access qualifications, on one pre-registration SLT undergraduate degree at a university in the UK. Success is measured in terms of module results, obtaining a degree, the ability to register as an SLT and first employment destination post-graduation. Methods & Procedures University applications were reviewed and students who entered via an Access course were identified for a ten-year period. Results for modules, individual assessments and final degree classification were obtained from their files and were compared against the mean score of traditional entry students on the years of the course covered by this study using a series of one sample t-tests. Outcomes & Results The students who entered through the non-traditional academic route are generally successful in completing their degree and in registering to work as an SLT. However, as a group they perform less well on the degree overall, on individual modules and on written examinations and they do not close this performance gap over the four years of the degree. In contrast, however, they perform on a par with their peers on other types of assessment (e.g. clinical placement, case study, data exercise). The Access students were more likely than traditional entry students to be working as an SLT six-months post-qualification. Conclusions & Implications These results suggest that some types of assessment may be more effective at tapping the skills of students from non-traditional academic backgrounds, and that more tailored support could be provided for this group of students in tackling university written examinations throughout all years of the programme. Despite limited preparation for university-level study and mixed performance on assessment, students from non-traditional academic backgrounds can do well at university and successfully gain employment as SLTs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on data from a three-year study (2008-2011) of partnerships of schools and colleges delivering the 14-19 Diplomas in England, this article examines how the dynamics of local partnerships were shaped by a contradictory policy landscape in which some policies strongly promoted collaborative working whilst others reinforced competition between institutions. Semi-structured interviews with 136 Diploma consortium leads and case studies of 30 Diploma consortia were undertaken. Most partnerships founded in direct response to government demands for collaboration were strategically and operationally less effective than those that had been formed earlier as a positive, dynamic response to locally identified interests/needs and had evolved over time. When key levers towards collaboration were removed by the new UK Coalition government (2010) and new policies restated the arguments for institutional autonomy and competition between institutions, the fragility of the 'enacted' partnerships became immediately apparent. Although members of Diploma consortia with a history of effective partnership working remained committed to the principle of collaboration, other policy developments such as the introduction of the English Baccalaureate and the recommendations of the Wolf Review on vocational education contributed to uncertainty about whether partnership working could, or indeed should, be sustained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the establishment of Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETLs) by the Higher Education Funding Council in England. It outlines this approach to enhancing effective university teaching and learning and discusses four CETLs that are closely related to university geography departments and dedicated to the themes of active learning, spatial literacy, experiential learning and education for sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]