The Aimhigher Rural and Coastal Issues Group

Latest DEFRA research (December 2009)

Educational attainment in rural areas and Post-16 educational choices in rural areas

Addressing the distinctive challenges of
Aimhigher in rural and coastal areas

The Aimhigher Rural and Coastal Issues group represents practitioners from areas isolated from large population settlements, either because of distance or poor transport networks. The group is a means for practitioners in rural and coastline areas to meet and explore issues and opportunities in their work, to share their learning, investigate comparative costs of effective interventions, test new ideas and disseminate their findings to a wider audience, etc. Partnerships operating in rural and coastline areas have developed innovative approaches that work with whole communities to address the issues arising from cultural and geographic distance. With the national focus on urban areas the Rural and Coastal Group hopes to have tangible outcomes in grood practice and to inform the development of Aimhigher nationally.

Widening participation partnerships in rural and coastline areas face distinctive challenges. Identifying, reaching and sustaining contact with their client groups in areas where transport links are weak and traditional industries are in decline presents particular issues. While the Aimhigher programme is founded on the assumption that ‘the single most important cause of the social class division in participation in HE is differential attainment in schools and colleges’ (HEFCE 2004/08), this model is inappropriate in rural and coastline areas. Low HE participation is often accompanied by relatively high attainment as cultural and geographical distance serves to reduce HE participation.

Meetings of this group are open to all practitioners and colleagues. To be included on group emails, contact Sue Hatt, University of the West of England, Bristol. Telephone: 0117 3442361 Email: Susan.Hatt@uwe.ac.uk

Issues for Aimhigher in Rural and Coastal Areas

Issues include

Low HE participation despite satisfactory attainment.
Geographic isolation makes it difficult to sustain Aimhigher engagement.
Community and cultural issues require a holistic approach to WP.
Limited access to appropriate opportunities for educational progression.
Decline of traditional industries and increase in low skill employment.

The difference between Aimhigher partnerships operating in urban areas and in rural and coastal areas is poorly understood and rarely acknowledged in national debates. Although low attainment and low HE participation coincide in urban areas, low HE participation can be accompanied by relatively high attainment in areas of rural and coastline deprivation. For example, young people’s HE participation rates were below 24 per cent in the wards served by the West Cornwall Education Action Zone and fell below 16 per cent in one ward . Although the GCSE results from schools in the zone fell below the average for that Local Education Authority, they compared favorably with those from urban areas in England, such as Bristol, for example, where low participation is accompanied by very low attainment.

In rural and coastal areas, geographical distance from an HEI can be considerable and traveling times are increased by poor transport networks. Bringing young people onto an HE campus for a visit can involve long journeys from school to campus for school students who have already experienced lengthy journeys to school. Aimhigher partnerships have to find ways maintaining links with schools that are efficient and do not disrupt the school curriculum. In urban areas, HE and FE institutions are large employers of staff so that young people from under-represented groups may know someone who works within these institutions even when they have no contact with HE students. Even limited familiarity with educational institutions is denied to young people in areas where distance makes such links impossible. Partnerships have developed innovative programmes to engage learners, their teachers, parents and carers in Aimhigher activities.

Rural areas are sparsely populated and this in itself is challenging. Education providers find it difficult to reach the ‘critical mass’ for cost effective provision , schools often lack sixth forms, work-based learning opportunities can be restricted and poor transport infrastructure increases journey time for learners. Rural and coastal areas have a pool of able well qualified young people but educational progression remains low and this impedes economic regeneration. For example in the Peninsula area of the South West, progression to level 3 remains below attainment of 5 A*-Cs at GCSE whereas in urban areas these indicators run in parallel. In both rural and coastal areas, the decline of traditional industries such as farming, fishing and mining has been accompanied by the growth of part-time, service sector employment often with limited career prospects. In rural and coastal areas in the South West for example, the tourism sector accounts for nearly 30 percent of employment .Young people can find employment although these jobs do not make full use of their potential.

Additional Costs of Rural and Coastal Activity

Identifying pockets of low HE participation in affluent communities.
Travel costs absorb a large proportion of funds.
Additional staff time is required.
A community-wide approach is required for effective action.

In rural and coastal areas, Aimhigher partnerships face additional costs in identifying, locating, reaching and maintaining contact with scattered communities, especially when they are geographically remote from HE and FE institutions. Rural areas have mixed populations with professional and manual workers living in close proximity. Groups that are under-represented within HE can thus be hidden within relatively affluent communities so that Aimhigher partnerships have to develop tools to identify and locate their priority groups.

Once these groups have been contacted, building and sustaining the long-term relationship on which good widening participation work depends is resource intensive. To develop, initiate and sustain a programme of widening participation activities in rural areas is resource-intensive. Partnerships point to the increased transport costs involved in HE campus visits or mentoring and in Cumbria half of their funding allocation for campus visits is absorbed by transport costs. In addition, the distance makes for increased costs associated with teacher and practitioner time. One partnership has estimated that the premium for activities with rural schools puts their costs 60 to 90 per cent higher than for comparable activities with urban schools.

Several Aimhigher Regional Forums (RF) and Area Steering Groups (ASG) have developed programmes of activities appropriate for the particular needs of rural and coastline communities. This often involves a ‘whole community approach’ to ensure that work with young people is reinforced by activities with key opinion formers, such as parents, carers, employers, youth workers and teachers. Activities that have been found to be effective include residential taster events, developing on-line materials, siting learning centres in pubs and post offices and basing workers in FE colleges. Given the strong community spirit in rural communities, this holistic approach is appropriate but increases the costs of making Aimhigher effective in rural and urban areas.

Funding Disadvantage

The formulaic weighting between attainment and HE participation.
Rural and coastal areas were in receipt of limited Excellence Challenge funds.

The Aimhigher funding formula is based on attainment and HE participation and the ways in which this plays out differ between rural and urban areas. In rural areas, participation in HE can be low even when achievement is relatively high. Consequently if the formula is weighted towards attainment, this advantages urban areas. Indeed the reweighting of the formula in 2005 brought additional funding to rural and coastal partnerships across England.

The integration of Partnerships for Progression with Excellence Challenge exacerbated the funding disadvantage for Aimhigher partnerships in rural and coastal areas. Whereas the P4P funding had been allocated formulaically, Excellence Challenge funds were not. Only EiC and EAZ partnerships were eligible for this funding stream. Although the bids for these partnerships had had to meet educational and social disadvantage criteria, there had been no systematic attempt to identify the most deprived areas and allocate Excellence Challenge funds on an entitlement basis. Consequently, some areas with significant pockets of educational and social deprivation never made a bid for an EiC/EAZ partnership and thus received no Excellence Challenge funding. Excellence Challenge funding was therefore very unevenly distributed across the country. The 2004 integration process significantly increased the resources to urban areas and did little to even up resources for partnerships in rural and coastal areas.

Members of the Aimhigher Rural and Coastal Issues Group

South of England

Aimhigher Hampshire and Isle of Wight

Tony Acland tony.acland@winchester.ac.uk

Rebecca Johnson rebecca.johnson@winchester.ac.uk

Aimhigher South East

Rob Gresham, Higher Education South East RobertGresham@hese.ac.uk

Aimhigher Peninsula

Vanessa Fitzgerald, University of Plymouth vfitzgerald@plymouth.ac.uk

Jane Cavanagh, University of Plymouth jccavanagh@plymouth.ac.uk

Aimhigher South West

Sue Hatt, University of the West of England Susan.Hatt@uwe.ac.uk

Jim Tate, University of the West of England James.Tate@uwe.ac.uk

Central England

Hereford and Worcester

Val Yates, University of Worcester v.yates@worc.ac.uk

Aimhigher Shropshire Telford and Wrekin

Karen Hayward, University of Wolverhampton k.hayward@wlv.ac.uk

East of England

Lincolnshire and Rutland

Sue Knight Sue.knight@bgc.ac.uk

Aimhigher Norfolk

Lorraine Sturman, Norfolk Learning Partnership
l.sturman.nlp@btconnect.com

North of England

North East

Shona Paul, Aimhigher North East s.paul@unis4ne.ac.uk

Open University Yorkshire

Jane Pinner, Open Universityj.pinner@open.ac.uk

Yorkshire

Pam Wilson, York Connexions Centre pwilson@guidance-enterprises.co.uk

Deborah Hunter, York College dhunter@yorkcollege.ac.uk

York St John

Christine Cooke c.cooke@yorksj.ac.uk

Aimhigher Rural and Coastal Issues group

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