Impact and effectiveness of widening access to HE in Wales

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Access to higher education (HE) has become an extremely controversial area of policy, as successive UK administrations have sought to balance increasing student fees with ensuring that HE is open to individuals from as wide a range of social backgrounds as possible. Moreover, relatively distinctive approaches have been adopted in the different devolved administrations of the UK. For example, currently, the Welsh Government has undertaken to pay the increased costs to students arising from the abolition of the fees cap. However, the evidence-base for evaluating different approaches to widening access is relatively weak. Accordingly, the Wales Institute for Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD), the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) and the Welsh Government (WG) are collaborating to develop an innovative research study in this field.The proposed research will analyse how individuals who are resident in Wales progress through secondary school, into sixth forms and further education colleges for post-16 education and on to HE. It will also explore what are the key factors here in determining whether individuals progress through the education system to HE or not. What are the relative impacts of the social characteristics of individuals, their previous educational attainment and their progression through the education system? What does this imply for the effects of barriers at the point of entry to HE, such as fees levels, entry processes and so forth? Answers to these questions are known for England, but not for other parts of the UK.The analysis will be based on the innovative use of three linked sources of information, the data for each of which are collected initially for administrative purposes. These are: the National Pupil Database (NPD) for Wales; the Lifelong Learning Wales Record (LLWR); and Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data. By linking these together, it will be possible to trace individual trajectories through the education system to entry to HE. It will also be possible to compare systematically the trajectories of those who do participate in HE with those who do not. Moreover, using sophisticated statistical techniques, it will be possible to determine which are the most influential factors in shaping patterns of HE participation. Results here will be compared with those that have been produced by similar analyses in England.A second part of the proposed study (funded by additional resources made available by the HEFCW) will investigate the development of distinctive approaches to widening access to HE by successive Welsh administrations since devolution in 1999. Of key significance here will be to establish the rationales that underpin the approaches adopted in Wales; and to compare these with those that have informed policy approaches in the other countries of the UK and England, in particular. In addition, the study will examine the ways in which national policies have been implemented by the Welsh universities, paying special attention to the assumptions about the determinants of HE participation that are in play here. This part of the study will be based on fieldwork, comprising the analysis of official and semi-official documents and interviews with politicians and senior officials responsible for widening-access policies; and with the professionals inside the universities responsible for implementing these policies.The results of the research will be fed directly into the deliberations of the WG and the HEFCW on the future development of policies on widening access to HE, which will be especially intensive over the next few years. Moreover, they will also provide the basis for working with the professionals in the universities with responsibility for implementing widening-access policies, to integrate the use of analyses of administrative data more firmly into their day-to-day practices.