David Barrett

Assistant Director

What’s new, what’s important? Writing your access agreement for 2015-16

Context

£££?

What we want you to tell us

• Your performance and the issues you are looking to address

• What approach will you take?

• What outcomes do you hope to achieve?

• What will you prioritise?

• How have you made those decisions?

• Financial info:

– fees

– student numbers

– predicted investment

Writing your 2015-16 access agreement

YOUR OWN

CONTEXT

1. A strategic, whole-institution approach

• Evidence that you are moving towards developing a strategic, whole-institution approach

• Your approach should reflect your performance and the areas for concern that you have identified

• WP embedded into your work across the institution

• Internal collaboration – e.g. between WP and E&D teams, or WP and L&T

A strategic approach to access agreements

2. Addressing the whole student lifecycle

• Supporting students:

– preparing for HE

– entering HE

– throughout the course

– onwards to further study or to/within employment

• Your focus should reflect your performance and the priorities that you have identified

3. An evidence-based approach

• Investing smartly for greatest impact

• Focus on outcomes and impact rather than scale of activities

• Use evidence available to you

• We understand your plans may not yet be fully developed – please update us

WASRS archive

www.heacademy.ac.uk/retention-archives

Evidence into action

Successful access strategy

Own specific access aims

What has worked for

others

What has worked for institution

Institution’s own targets measure success

Institution’s own review of where it needs to improve

Sharing of good practice

4. Rebalancing investment

• Further rebalancing towards outreach, student success and progression activity

• This could include backfilling where other funding streams have been lost

• Your focus should reflect your performance and the priorities that you have identified

• Show the evidence and rationale for your decisions

5. Long-term outreach

• All institutions should invest in sustained, targeted outreach

• This should include work to widen participation to the sector as a whole, alongside own-institution recruitment

• You should continue to build infrastructure and activity

• We recognise that it takes time for this work to have an impact

6. Mature and part-time students

• All institutions should consider what you can do to support access for part-time and mature students

• This could include:

– partnering with employers

– work with community groups

– developing more flexible provision

– improving information, advice and guidance, including financial information

7. Effective collaboration

• Protect and strengthen collaborative work

• Collaborative activity, targets, evaluation

• This could include working with:– other institutions– FE providers– schools– employers/businesses– third sector organisations– training providers– local authorities

• Collaboration within institution

Student engagement

• We strongly encourage institutions to:

consult students in the design, implementation and monitoring of agreements … to involve students at an early stage when drawing up plans for outreach, retention and financial support

• Evidence of student consultation

• Innovative/new examples

• What other areas could students influence?

If you want to change your previous plans…

• You may not change firm commitments made in previous agreements, e.g. financial support

• You may change plans that you described in previous agreements: – where grant changes impact on your ability to

deliver activities– where evidence shows programmes should be

expanded or rolled back

• If your changes materially affect the spirit of previous agreements, you must amend those agreements

Targets and milestones

• It is not compulsory to extend targets from previous agreements over a longer period…

• …but you may do so

• You may not reduce the ambition of targets due to lack of progress, even if this is a result of funding changes

• We will take context into account when monitoring progress against targets

• You may change/remove targets that are obsolete or where the activity is discontinued

Who to contact for further advice

Region of institution Key contact(s)

West Midlands and North Fiona Clark and Ben Spratt

East Midlands and South Richard Shiner

London and EastJessica Woodsford and Rachel Wright

All/generalAndy Leslie, Ankaret Fillipich and Alex Wardrop

0117 931 7171 or enquiries@offa.org.ukwww.offa.org.uk/contact-us

Any questions?

enquiries@offa.org.uk0117 931 7171