International Comparators of Widening Participation

Widening participation in higher education remains a Government priority in the UK. Each country in the UK has taken a slightly different approach; Scotland particularly focusing on progression, Wales specifically on community engagement, and England especially on young people’s access to HE. Widening participation in higher education is therefore a diverse field with many different issues to be addressed. When international comparators are examined the field becomes even more diverse. Action on Access is the national co-ordinating team for widening participation for the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the Learning and Skills Council (LSC). The team comprises a dispersed team of researchers and practitioners in the field of widening participation in England. As part of our contract with the HEFCE, the team planned to undertake international comparator research into widening participation practice. The purpose of this research is to inform policy and practice in England by learning from other similar situations (e.g. OECD countries1 ) so as to build the research capacity of practitioners in the field of widening participation (WP) so that they can understand their practice context in relation to other practice contexts and to develop a broader base of research material for future use in the field.