Widening participation
Welcome to widening participation at Kingston University.
The University is proud of the diverse student population who choose to study with us. Likewise we are proud of the work we achieve with both students enrolled at Kingston and those at our partner schools and colleges contemplating studying at university.
With the fast pace at which the higher education landscape is changing this has inevitably brought both strategic and operational challenges for myself and colleagues. Needless to say Kingston University is confident that we can continue to successfully support all those students with the ability to access higher education and succeed. Our confidence is backed up by our investment in the National Scholarship Programme and also the Kingston Scholarship Scheme. In addition, we have revised our Compact Scheme to include schools and colleges from across the country and our new mentoring programme will provide opportunities for 100 second-year students to support more than 1,000 first-year students. We also continue to show the way in the field of student lead and ambassador work. This included hosting the first annual National Student Ambassador Conference.
All our work aims to provide the financial, academic, social and pastoral support required to ensure both prospective and existing Kingston University students reach their full potential. Please take a look at our pages and see for yourself the wide range of initiatives we have developed to support all those potential students to achieve this goal.
David Taylor
Head of widening participation
How widening participation works at Kingston
Widening participation is formed of two interconnected teams – Education Liaison and Education Partnerships. Both work closely with the UK Student Recruitment and Outreach Team (STROT), part of the Recruitment and Development Department. Together these three teams are responsible for delivering a range of events and activities throughout stages of the undergraduate decision-making process (starting at Year 5 in schools).
This collaborative approach is dependent on an innovative structure, which locates members of the Education Liaison team responsible for school and college outreach work and the Education Partnerships team with the UK Student Recruitment and Outreach Team. This combines teams from the Academic Development Centre (Education Liaison and Education Partnerships) with the UK Student Recruitment and Events Team (from Recruitment and Development).
This enables a co-ordinated and dovetailed approach, ensuring events and activities are designed to meet individual needs at various stages of the undergraduate decision-making process – funnelling down from general higher education awareness-raising to more Kingston University-recruitment specific. The joined-up approach also enables a more effective way of targeting specific and wider widening participation learner groups.
