What is the future of collaborative outreach in England?

Over the last two decades, universities have worked hard to widen participation in higher education. These efforts have borne strong results, with the proportion of people accessing higher education in England by age 20 increasing from 33.6% for the 2001/02 cohort up to 49.1% for the 2017/18 cohort. This success has partly been achieved through outreach activity, in which universities target interventions to support potential students from underrepresented backgrounds to consider and apply to university. This activity can include taster days or summer schools for school-age children to try out an undergraduate course, mentoring workshops, school visits by university staff, and more.  

While this activity delivered by individual universities is proven to be effective in supporting progression to higher education, the impact can be amplified when universities and schools work together collaboratively to deliver outreach activity locally. By pooling their resources, universities can efficiently increase the scale of their outreach with regional specific work, utilising input and collaboration with local stakeholders. Partnerships with schools also ensures all local children are able to access neutral information, advice and guidance, supporting them to make informed choices about the best route for them – whether that is a pathway in higher education or further education.  

The value of a national collaborative outreach model has long been recognised with numerous iterations of the scheme from AimHigher starting in 2004, cut in 2011, before reforming as the National Networks for Collaborative Outreach in 2014 and then the National Collaborative Outreach Programme. This therefore represents a long-term project that has evolved to meet the different needs of learners and society in response to evidence.

The current model of collaborative outreach partnership is a national scheme called UniConnect, which was set up in 2017 and consists of 29 partnerships across the country. The scheme brings together local universities, colleges, and other local partners to offer activities, advice and information about the benefits and realities of going to university or college. External evaluation of UniConnect shows that the partnership model is impactful in targeting underrepresented students who would otherwise struggle to access higher education, harnessing the power of local partners to address local challenges. Independent reviews have shown that every pound spent on the programme delivers between £5 to £9 back to Treasury. 

The Humber Outreach Programme (HOP), the UniConnect partnership for the Humber region, took a fresh approach to the question of how to raise attainment and increase participation in higher education across the region. The Future Thinking programme was co-created with schools specifically for Year eight pupils, particularly focusing on the often-overlooked ‘mid-attainers'. The real innovation comes in using self-regulated learning in the generic themes of careers, pathways and Labour Market Information (LMI), which can be applied across the curriculum, rather than traditional models of maths and literacy.   

This approach ensures the programme adds value to stretched school timetables and engages the most underrepresented learners. Feedback and data have been collected from 238 participants, with 92% of pupils feeling that the programme had a positive impact on their study and learning skills.   

However, although the data, evaluation and individual testimonies all show that UniConnect is a valuable tool to widen participation to higher education, the future of the scheme remains uncertain.

UniConnect has been subject to annual cuts to what is already insecure short-term funding. The scheme was cut from £60 million in 2020/21 down to just £20 million for 2024/25. Funding cuts limit the scale of outreach activity that UniConnect partnerships can deliver, with learner engagement reducing from 455,000 young people in 2021/22 to 300,000 in 2023/23. It also creates uncertainty, making it challenging for longer-term work to be implemented – for example, interventions with children of younger ages in primary school or even in early years education – or to build lasting relationships with local partners. This ultimately reduces the potential for UniConnect to break down barriers to opportunity for young people across the country. 

In December, the Office for Students set out a vision for the future of national collaborative outreach and the theory of change that underpins it. Amongst other shifts, this theory of change champions collaboration and the key role of partners as connecters to address regional needs.

Considering the need to secure a sustainable future for UniConnect as well as other challenges that the nation currently faces – including continued regional inequality, stagnant economic growth, skills gaps in areas critical to the future industrial strategy, rising numbers of young people not in education, employment or training – we developed a proposal for a new fund to address these challenges in one scheme.  

We want to build on the success of UniConnect, calling for the establishment of a Tertiary Education Opportunity Fund to incentivise local partnerships between FE colleges, universities, and schools. We would like to see such partnerships take on a more strategic role locally. This is about joining up partners to provide the right advice to learners, whether that is studying at a further education college or a university. 

Using intelligence from Skills England, local outreach teams should join up advice on study pathways more closely with labour market intelligence relevant to a local area. Driving demand in education is only one aspect of how the TEOF could add value. We also think it can play a role in creating joint course provision with strong progression pathways. This requires TEOF to use incentives locally to drive a culture of collaboration.   

To ensure that everyone, regardless of background, is able to benefit from the transformative impacts of higher education, it is crucial for collaborative outreach to receive multi-year national funding. Expertise and partnerships have been carefully nurtured over decades, these must now evolve but also be protected with sustainable funding. By harnessing the collective power of local partners, young people can be better supported to make the right choices for them and deliver the skills needs of the future.