Fair access for local students
The University of Bath ranks highly in the league tables of UK universities published by a
number of national newspapers, including the
Times, Independent and
Guardian. Recently, the University was awarded the title of
University of the Year 2011/12 by
The Sunday Times, one of the most influential newspapers in the world. Furthermore, its
research is internationally respected and its students are in demand by employers because of the
high quality of teaching on offer.
Annette said: "I joined the University in February as the Head of Widening Participation, a newly created position which will play a pivotal role for all the University’s widening participation and access activities.
My team will be working on developing and strengthening the University’s relationships with partner higher education institutions, schools, and further education colleges to promote access and achieve a more diverse and socially inclusive student population.
This post was created to focus on fair access and specifically to implement the University’s Access Agreement. There is already some very exciting work taking place across the University which will provide a firm foundation for the Widening Participation Office’s future initiatives.
For example
, we
already run a number of Higher Education workshops which are designed to give potential students a
taste of higher education and encourage participation whilst the University holds a very popular,
over-subscribed Summer School, in partnership with the universities of Exeter and Bristol, which is
specifically aimed at students from families without a background in Higher Education.
Some students have told us that they are not applying to the University of Bath as they don’t think they are suitable, but that’s definitely not the case. We welcome talented students from all backgrounds to apply. We are interested in the whole person and although we select on the basis of academic performance and examination results, this is by no means our only criteria.
The University of Bath offers a very comprehensive financial support package for lower income students which consist of fee waivers and bursaries which are awarded to UK and EU students on our full-time campus-based undergraduate and Foundation Degree programmes. You don’t need to apply for fee waivers and bursaries as the University will determine whether you are eligible by using data from UCAS and Student Finance."
If you have specific queries relating to the Widening Participation Office, please email: widening-participation@bath.ac.uk .
To read this article in the Education Yearbook for Wiltshire 2012, please visit http://go.bath.ac.uk/hoi8 , and see Page 4.