TY - JOUR
T1 - Vocational and Mature Students Success in Higher Education Foundation Programmes
AU - Black, Anna
PY - 2022/5/4
Y1 - 2022/5/4
N2 - Higher education in the UK is pressured to widen participation due to the social justice issues of mobility and movement through the class divide. However, those from lower classes and mature students elect for qualifications that do not classically allow entry into university, for example, the Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC) and Access to Higher Education (AHE) diplomas. A solution to this is a university bridging programme. Such a programme was analysed as to whether it prepares different cohorts of students effectively for undergraduate programmes, that is, those who have just missed the entry qualification but are coming from Advanced level qualifications, the other coming from nontraditional entry routes. Data from one academic year were anonymised and analysed. Results indicated that students coming from courses designed to widen participation scored significantly lower on the programme than those coming from Advanced level awards of any subject. This indicates that vocational and returning-to-education qualifications fail to prepare students for academia due to being focussed on the outcome, rather than the objective, of learning. The study also questioned entry tariff point equivalency. Those with higher points and nontraditional qualifications performed worse, suggesting that entry points cannot be used prognostically. Tariff points are a system to translate traditional grading systems into a numerical form which then allows for easy comparison between students. Varying qualifications have differing grading systems, and tariff points are used to enable the conversion of these grading systems to a universal one.
AB - Higher education in the UK is pressured to widen participation due to the social justice issues of mobility and movement through the class divide. However, those from lower classes and mature students elect for qualifications that do not classically allow entry into university, for example, the Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC) and Access to Higher Education (AHE) diplomas. A solution to this is a university bridging programme. Such a programme was analysed as to whether it prepares different cohorts of students effectively for undergraduate programmes, that is, those who have just missed the entry qualification but are coming from Advanced level qualifications, the other coming from nontraditional entry routes. Data from one academic year were anonymised and analysed. Results indicated that students coming from courses designed to widen participation scored significantly lower on the programme than those coming from Advanced level awards of any subject. This indicates that vocational and returning-to-education qualifications fail to prepare students for academia due to being focussed on the outcome, rather than the objective, of learning. The study also questioned entry tariff point equivalency. Those with higher points and nontraditional qualifications performed worse, suggesting that entry points cannot be used prognostically. Tariff points are a system to translate traditional grading systems into a numerical form which then allows for easy comparison between students. Varying qualifications have differing grading systems, and tariff points are used to enable the conversion of these grading systems to a universal one.
KW - academic preparedness
KW - transition
KW - higher education
KW - foundation level
KW - vocational qualifications
KW - mature students
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85109885369&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/07377363.2021.1923306
DO - 10.1080/07377363.2021.1923306
M3 - Article
VL - 70
SP - 105
EP - 121
JO - Journal of Continuing Higher Education
JF - Journal of Continuing Higher Education
SN - 0737-7363
IS - 2
ER -