The North East of England traditionally has the lowest rates of educational attainment and progression to higher education in the country. Newcastle University has a long-standing commitment to social mobility, and leads a number of successful initiatives designed to improve attainment and help young people overcome barriers to higher education.

Now in its 25th year, Newcastle’s multi award-winning widening access programme, PARTNERS, is one of the most well-established supported entry routes to higher education of its kind. Through PARTNERS, the University has supported more than 9,000 students to study at Newcastle. This year, demand for the programme has more than doubled, with some 4,000 students seeking places on PARTNERS summer schools.

The North East Uni Connect Programme, funded by the Office for Students, removes academic, financial and cultural barriers, ensuring all young people, along with their parents, carers and teachers, have the information and support they need to achieve their ambitions. Uni Connect is a collaboration of 15 colleges, five universities and 106 schools, delivering to over 35,000 students. Those who engaged in five or more activities were more than twice as likely to progress to HE than those that engaged in one-off activities (39% as opposed to 19%).

Realising Opportunities (RO) is an award-winning national fair access scheme which encourages talented students to apply to leading institutions. Some 89% of RO students applied to university, representing more than double the overall proportion of 18-year-olds applying in the same year. Meanwhile, 66% of RO students eligible for free school meals progressed to research-intensive, compared to 28.1% of students nationally.

The North East Raising Aspiration Partnership (NERAP) is a long-standing collaboration of the five universities in the region who fund and collaborate on outreach activity for under-16s. At the beginning of 2023, NERAP became the first regional Higher Education partnership to collaboratively sign up to the Care Leaver Covenant, committing partner institutions to providing all care-experienced students with consistent access to support throughout their university journey.

In the past year, NERAP has worked with over 30,000 students in North East schools, and has supported more than 50 care experienced students.

In partnership with Northumbria University and the national education charity IntoUniversity, Newcastle University provides additional educational support to children and young people aged 7-18 who come from backgrounds under-represented in higher education.

The Into University Newcastle East centre opened in October 2021. One of the centre’s stand-out achievements is that the progression rate to Higher Education for Year 13 students, with participation rates significantly higher than both the national and regional average. The average progression rate from the centre in 2022-23 was 74%, compared with the local average of 12%, and a national average of 44%.

Links

• PARTNERS programme
• Realising Opportunities
• NERAP
• IntoUniversity