cold spots

This article summarises the findings of a study by England’s Higher Education Funding Council: what difference does having a university in your area make? Actually, quite a lot the study concludes, finding that school leavers in many areas – including those with large numbers of middle-class families – were failing to move on to university despite achieving good exam grades. This is the first time HEFCE has brought school and higher education data together with employment and mobility data to give a comprehensive picture of higher education participation, provision, employment and graduate mobility. It won’t surprise Hinterland readers that the study identified low HE provision in the border areas between England and Wales, along the Cumbrian coast, Humberside and North Yorkshire, from Kent to the Wash and the South West. In practical and statistical terms this means in Corringham and Fobbing, Thurrock, Essex, just 25.6% of school leavers went to university over a five-year period. It was 17.7 percentage points lower than the 43.4% who would be expected to go given the academic performance of pupils. Dorchester East, Dorset, was also high on the list, with just 31.3% of pupils going into higher education – 16.8 percentage points lower than expected. Other areas sending relatively few pupils to university included the wards of Blackdown in Somerset, Puddletown in Dorset, Ingleton in Durham and Bishopstoke East in Hampshire. A series of maps have been produced showing these ‘cold spots’.  What impacts on young people’s choice to participate in HE (e.g. they may not want to move away from family and friends or a lack of locally available jobs requiring a university degree) and what can be done to increase access to provision in rural areas?