The Importance of Access for Adult Learners
Widening Participation is associated with aspiration and attainment-raising with school pupils. But what if you left school with few qualifications thirty years ago?
As I was drafting this blog post, I happened to be listening to Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. The guest interviewee was Simon Woolley, Principal of Homerton College Cambridge and the first black Head of an Oxbridge College. He admitted owing his professional journey (from highly inauspicious beginnings) to stumbling across an Access course in his twenties.
The Context: Widening Adult Participation in HE
Policies aimed at widening HE participation were stimulated as long ago as the 1997 Dearing Review, and since then universities have spent millions on activities and interventions with school pupils. However, there is a much longer history of preparatory provision aimed at older learners, with Access to HE programmes offered since the late 1970s. Such Access Programmes provide valuable insights into ‘what works’ in widening participation - research demonstrates adult students progressing from an Access course have enhanced subsequent achievement, attainment, retention and continuation, as well as greater student satisfaction.
The scale of provision is surprising – last year 40K adult students took a one-year Access to HE Diploma from 1200 courses offered in FE, many progressing to a local partner university to follow a vocational pathway. Similarly, at the Open University (OU), which has no prior entry requirements, 4.5K students registered on an OU Access module to prepare for undergraduate study. In addition, many universities have recognised the need to prepare students who fail to meet entry requirements, with 700 Foundation Year programmes offered annually through UCAS.
Why should universities do more to prepare (adult) learners?
A number of factors have aligned recently which should galvanise thinking in the UK HE sector around provision aimed at adults. First, the numbers of both full-time and part-time mature learners (the terms are used interchangeably by HESA for any student over 21 years of age) are in decline, with potential older learners concerned at:
the perceived cost/value of personal investment in HE;
the inflexibility of university programmes to meet adult needs;
the inaccessibility of Information, Advice and Guidance needed to navigate complex ‘spaghetti’ progression pathways.
Second, the long-heralded credit-based funding system ‘Lifelong Learning Entitlement’ is due to come on stream from 2025. This offers a four-year loan entitlement to the value of £37K, introducing greater flexibility via modular, non-linear study and the extension of maintenance support to part-time learners. While focussed on addressing higher level skills gaps, this inevitably challenges the primacy of the conventional three-year degree and is intended to stimulate greater FE/HE collaboration, both of which could benefit adult learners.
Third, the Augar Report (2018), the ‘Post-18 Review’ which proposed bridging courses to mitigate attrition at Level 4, has finally burst into life with a government directive limiting the fees universities can charge for Foundation Year programmes to the (much cheaper) cost of FE-based provision.
Fourth, the Office for Students has introduced an Equality of Opportunity Risk Register, with 5 out of 12 categories of risks to equality of opportunity associated with access, all of which have a particular resonance for adult learners:
Risk 1: Knowledge and skills
Risk 2: Information and guidance
Risk 3: Perception of higher education
Risk 4: Application success rates
Risk 5: Limited choice of course type and delivery mode
So, there are challenges in relation to declining numbers of adult learners in HE, risks in relation to equal access, but opportunities in relation to changes to funding. As a contribution to a more equitable society, all universities should take the needs of adult learners more seriously. WP activities and resource allocation need to be re-framed with strategies to recruit and support mature students in the context of more inclusive Access and Participation Plans.
What are the obstacles?
Colleagues working in WP will be very aware of the intersectional disadvantages facing under-represented students. These can include a toxic mix of characteristics including:
Poor socio-economic status
Working class
Low participation areas
Certain minority ethnic backgrounds
Disability and/or chronic illness
Low prior entry qualifications
First in family to attend HE
Time out of education
Care-experienced
For adult learners, age compounds those disadvantages, impacting negatively on decisions later in life to apply to HE. Barriers can be conceptualised through three lenses:
1. Dispositional
For all HE professionals, avoiding deficit assumptions (‘blaming the individual learner’) is a crucial aspect of social justice, but we know from research with mature students that many who enter HE tell us they experience fragile self-esteem (‘imposter syndrome’) and lack confidence, contributing to limited resilience. When appended to long-held memories of negative and unsuccessful learning at school, it is hardly surprising that some adult students may appear ‘needy’ in terms of institutional support and seem more likely to withdraw when life events disrupt their studies. In relation to individual dispositions, this can manifest itself as fear - some social science Access students have told me they were scared to approach their tutor for support. I have also heard Arts and languages Access students describe their fear of poetry and music as they had been poorly taught at school and saw such disciplines as ‘too difficult’. When I researched with STEM Access students, they reported being excited about the prospect of studying science but being paralysed with fear of Maths.
2. Situational
Inevitably, many adult learners will need to juggle a range of roles beyond simply focussing on being a student. Wearing numerous extra hats (for example parent, carer, employee – sometimes in several jobs) will require adult students to juggle multiple priorities. This can result in mature learners attempting to study while time-poor – leaving little wriggle room with assessment deadlines when the complexities of messy adult lives intrude. Situational obstacles facing adults also include money worries, amplified in times of economic austerity and rising prices, when aversion to debt clashes with the cost of HE fees for those older students who need to work extra hours to finance rent or mortgage payments and feed a family. Financial concerns and time poverty can combine to heighten mature student fears of not being good enough for HE, and lead to withdrawal.
3. Institutional
Both dispositional and situational obstacles can be lessened if universities pro-actively address institutional barriers. Such barriers can include many hidden aspects of pedagogy – blind assumptions that HE has to be done in a certain way versus ‘designing-in’ greater inclusivity in teaching, learning and assessment. Institutional barriers can also be mitigated if universities give greater consideration to the impact of fees and funding arrangements, as well as the accessibility of support services, on adult learners. Too often, adult learners across the sector have told me they need institutions to offer far more flexibility, and to acknowledge adults have often experienced non-linear learning journeys.
Solutions at the Open University
It can be done. In terms of pedagogy, at the Open University, we designed our three Access modules (delivered part-time over 30 weeks via distance learning) as interdisciplinary preparation for undergraduate study. Students are introduced to six cognate disciplines in each (and 25% of our learners change their study intention as a result of learning across disciplines – preventing a key cause of subsequent withdrawal due to wrong subject choice). We offer a fast-track version, for those students (following an advisory conversation) who just need some confidence building after a study gap.
Drawing on scholarship, we have developed a structured framework across all modules to ensure, through repetition and signposting, students are familiar with the learning environment and do not get lost in journeying through the teaching material. The voices of module authors are utilised throughout to encourage student persistence. Study skills are embedded through the module material, with reflective activities built-in so students receive tutor feedback on their skills development as part of assessment. Organised into three blocks, students begin with print material and then are supported to transition to online learning.
While reflecting on the quality and impact of our Access Programme over the last decade, we identified a key institutional barrier was an inbuilt assumption that adults returning to education would know how to learn. Consequently, we have refined our teaching activities to highlight the importance of learning how to learn, and transparently addressed the need for adult learners to become assessment-literate in order to reduce fear of assessment and maximise success.
The importance of an inspirational and empathetic tutor cannot be underestimated for adult learners. At the OU we appoint Access tutors based on their understanding of the needs of adults returning to learn as much as their disciplinary knowledge. We teach through a system of one-to-one telephone tutorials, with tutors pro-actively contacting their students at regular intervals. This has been crucial in developing trust between an unconfident learner and their tutor and ensuring more confident voices do not dominate in a group setting, with regular dialogic feedback on assessments supporting assimilation into an alien HE environment.
Tuition fees and inflexible funding support can also present insurmountable Institutional barriers to adult learners. The OU made a strategic decision a decade ago to subsidise the fee for our 30 credit Access modules, and to offer a full fee waiver to students on incomes below £25K. 80%+ of our Access students qualify for the fee waiver, but this has affected attrition and we are exploring more nuanced metrics to capture what success looks like for an Access student.
Concluding take-aways
Faced with inequitable access, the imperative for HE professionals is to change institutions to adult-learner-friendly and flexibly responsive settings. Currently, too often universities offer a pedagogic environment which is itself an obstacle built on deficit thinking around ‘fixing what is lacking’.
Access providers do a good job in addressing stubborn and persistent inequalities amongst mature students facing complex intersections of disadvantage. Access tutors play a key role in supporting, inspiring and motivating mature learners to achieve their potential and give them agency, especially in helping older learners to value the transferability of their own life skills. Ultimately, Access courses enable more diverse learners to access HE, and subsequent achievement is impressive, offering a low-cost low risk pathway into HE, transforming adults’ lives.
About the author
John Butcher is Professor of Inclusive Teaching in Higher Education and Director of Access and Open Programmes at the Open University. He is Managing Editor of the international journal Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning.
