Vocational and Mature Student Success in Higher Education Foundation Programmes

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Academic preparedness
• transition
• higher education
• foundation level
• vocational qualifications
• mature students

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna M. Black

Dr. Anna M. Black is a Senior Lecturer in Microbiology and has an interest in investigating the transition which students undergo when entering higher education and the impact this has on academic attainment. A Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, she has also been awarded a Post Graduate Diploma in Academic Studies, with the focus of much of her early work on the academic attainment of international postgraduate students when combined with the English for Academic Purpose provision.