One academic's innovative idea for helping a deprived community? Ask parents what they need to raise their own aspirations – and then work with them to deliver it Trisha Bennett has lived in Whitley for nearly four decades, so she knows it better than most. She has had a front-row seat for all the outside attempts to ‘save’ the people that live there. And there have been many, many attempts: the community development consultant says that the area has been “initiatived to death”....

Disadvantaged students are more than three times as likely to live at home while attending university than their wealthier peers, a new study has found. Moving long distances to study for a degree is largely the preserve of “white, middle class, privately educated young people,” the report from social mobility Sutton Trust suggests. The study found that more than half (55.8 per cent) of young people n 2014/15 stayed local for university, attending institutions that were less than around 55 mil...

Theresa May will urge people to “throw away” the “outdated attitude” that university is the only desirable route for young people and that going into vocational training “is something for other people’s children”. In a speech in Derbyshire to launch a wide-ranging review into post-18 education, the Prime Minister will call for a parity of esteem between academic and technical options so we can “create a system of tertiary education that works for all our young people”. Read more.

NEON are seeking a Training and Events Officer to support our National Education Opportunities Network (NEON) are seeking a Training and Events Officer to support their national Access Academy training programme, national conference and our range of other seminars and summits. The role will involve extensive liaison with our members and senior stakeholders from across higher education. NEON is the professional organisation for widening access to higher education (HE) in England. The network deli...

With soaring debt, and no maintenance grants, more than 50% of students at some universities now live at home. They are locked out of lectures or reprimanded by staff for being late when public transport lets them down. They are excluded from freshers’ week functions ticketed in halls and, if they do go on a night out, they are constantly checking their phones for the last train. Commuter students, living with their families, are not having an easy time in a system geared to the residential expe...

Experts have called for a national debate about "culture and ambition in white working class families" after it emerged that the number of young white people going to university has declined over the past three years, despite an overall increase in admissions. New figures published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)​ show the number of white students has fallen by more than 34,000 since 2013/14 – a decrease of 2 per cent – while in total enrolments rose by 1 per cent in the same...

Education secretary says schemes aim to ensure that ‘every child will get the best literacy teaching’. It is hoped a £5.7m investment will help boost literacy and numeracy skills in 469 schools around the country. Phonics roadshows and English hubs are among a range of measures announced by the government in an attempt to improve child literacy. The programmes will form part of the drive to tackle inequality and ensure “every child will get the best literacy teaching”, the education secretary, J...

Ucas stats show how the pattern of young people going to university varies widely across the UK. A geographic breakdown of the entry rates of 18-year-olds into higher education in 2017 is revealed in new data released by Ucas, the universities admissions body, today. Read More.

HEFCE has published a report that shows graduates in the UK have a greater sense of personal wellbeing and life satisfaction than those without a higher education qualification. The findings show that individuals are more likely to feel that their life is worthwhile when they have completed a higher education qualification. Graduates also tend to measure their lives higher in terms of overall happiness than non-graduates. Read More.

Every so often a new study tells us privately-schooled pupils perform worse at university than their state-schooled peers, or that there are huge gaps in attainment across measures of disadvantage, gender and ethnicity. Perhaps the most significant gulf, however, lies between students who arrive holding A-levels and those who have graduated with BTECs. Using data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency research shows that, over the past 10 years, 6% of students arrived at university exclusiv...