Section:GDN 1N PaGe:32 Edition Date:190730 Edition:01 Zone:S Sent at 26/7/2019 17:06 cYanmaGentaYellow
- The Guardian Tuesday 30 July 2019
(^32) Education
I
n the well-heeled district
of Clifton in Bristol, with
its Georgian crescents and
French brasseries , 100%
of school leavers go to
university. Yet in the southern
suburb of Hartcliff e, the fi gures are
the lowest in the country: only 8.6%
make it there. This is the divided
face of Brexit Britain.
Bristol University, part of the
Russell Group and a favourite
among private school students , has
long been at the privileged heart of
Clifton. But it has radical plans to
pull in the deprived communities
to the south and east : starting with
a campus on what its management
calls “the wrong side of the tracks”.The university was one of the fi rst
to introduce “contextual off ers”- lower grade requirements to
students from a list of schools – back
in 2009. Now it wants to go further
by introducing fl exible courses
designed to appeal to people in
deprived local districts, even if they
haven’t performed well at school.
The new Temple Quarter campus
will be built on the urban east side
of Bristol Temple Meads station.
“People on that side of the city don’t
have access to the city centre, and
many kids will grow up never going
there,” says Guy Orpen , Bristol’s
deputy vice-chancellor. “Transport
is fragmented and poor. It is just a
few miles away from us in the west
of the city but it is a diff erent world.”
Bristol’s plans are not driven
by altruism alone. In 2017-18 one
third (34%) of its students were
from private schools, according
to the Higher Education Statistics
Agency. The Offi ce for Students, the
universities regulator, is leaning on
which to teach its students. Upstairs
will be tiny bedsits for people who
want to study but need a place with
a stable low rent, or time away from
complicated situations at home, to
make that possible.
Holmes says people in her
community aren’t short of
aspirations. “A lot of our families
have two adults working three jobs
between them; working all hours
of the day and night. They get basic
qualifi cations and then drop out of
the system because there is nothingthat fi ts their lives. It makes it hard
to break out,” she says.
“We are saying to local mums,
‘Don’t just do as many cleaning jobs
as you can so your kids can go to
university. You can go too.’”
Bristol has already experimented
with access courses, which are
not common in Russell Group
universities. Ninety per cent
of students on its foundation
programme in the arts and
humanities don’t have A-levels – and
the university says three-quarters
of them go on to study a degree at
Bristol or elsewhere. The university
runs taster courses with community
organisations, including Bristol
Refugee Rights and the Single Parent
Action Network.
Myla Lloyd was part of the fi rst
year of this foundation course in
2013 and now works for a local MP.
She left home at 17 with no A-levels
and worked mainly in coff ee shops
until she started the foundation
course at 21, going on to gain a fi rst-
class degree in history of art at the
university.
Lloyd hopes Bristol’s new project
will open up the university to local
people who have found themselves
shut out from education. “People
often can’t even aff ord a bus ticket
to get into the centre. And if you
haven’t ever been to a youth centre,
let alone a museum, why would it
occur to you to go to university?”‘Wrong side of the tracks’
Why Bristol is expanding
into the poor part of town
▲ Myla Lloyd had no A-levels when
she started her foundation courseinstitutions to demonstrate that
they are targeting potential students
from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Bristol was the fi rst university
to announce plans to expand
signifi cantly when the government
removed the recruitment cap in- The new campus, which will
house 3,000 students, represents a
second big expansion. It will be eyed
with trepidation by other nearby
universities that already accept
students – and their £9,250 a year
fees – with lower grades.
The new campus will be next
door to one of the most deprived
areas of the city, Barton Hill. Unlike
Hartcliff e, this is a mainly black
and multi-ethnic district, with a
large number of Somali residents.
The council has calculated 46% of
children are growing up in poverty.
Joanna Holmes, CEO of the Barton
Hill Settlement , a community
centre , says that over in Clifton the
university is unreachable in more
ways than one. “It is symbolically
posh,” she says. “This new campus
feels like the university coming
down the hill to the rest of us .”
In addition to the new campus ,
due to open in 2022, the university
is planning a “micro-campus” in
brightly painted shipping containers
within the Barton Hill settlement for
people who still fi nd the whole idea
of university a step too far.
It will have three containers in
The posh university has
radical plans to pull in
deprived communities,
writes Anna FazackerleyРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS