Widening participation
Our aims
We are committed to ensuring that all students and staff have full access to all aspects of university life and are able to fulfil their potential. We are working to ensure that we attract a more diverse student and staff body which is representative of society.
Widening access for students
Schools and colleges
We carry out a range of outreach activities for schools and colleges to support learning and encourage young people to reach their potential. These aim to break down barriers to higher education for prospective students from under-represented backgrounds and help them develop the skills and knowledge to succeed on their educational journey.
We play a key role in the Future Quest targeted outreach programme, a Bristol-area partnership of higher education providers, schools, colleges, employers and local authorities, all working collaboratively to encourage young people to progress into university. Through our Heading Higher Passport Plus programme, we are committed to widening access to local students from groups currently under-represented in higher education. We also support Careerpilot, a comprehensive careers information and advice website designed to help young people to make confident and informed choices about their next steps.
Degree Apprenticeships
We work closely with further education institutions to target our apprenticeship provision at people who may not have traditionally considered Higher Education. Our degree apprenticeships offer a technical learning pathway from Level 2 to Level 7 in key industries with higher employment rates in the region.
UWE Bristol works closely with a range of employers to support their diversity agenda, improve their strategies and broaden representation in their workforces. We work with a number of Boards across the city and region to support messages around apprenticeships and increase participation to higher and degree level education.
Scholarships and bursaries
UWE Bristol provides financial support to students in order to remove financial barriers to both access to, and participation within, higher education.
We provide bursaries for students with low family income, and for students who are care leavers, estranged from their families, or carers through the UWE Cares programme. UWE Cares students also receive a package of pastoral support.
The University provides a hardship fund to support students who find themselves in financial difficulties and also provide a short-term loan scheme to enable students to meet additional costs.
We offer students from low income backgrounds activity bursaries to engage in placements, international experiences or other co-curricular activities. We offer a number of scholarships and bursaries to support students from particular under-represented backgrounds to study at UWE Bristol. These include:
- Wallscourt Scholarship for young people who attended local secondary schools
- Rod Coleman Scholarship for mature students
- Paul Stephenson Bursary for students from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds to study in our Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries and Education
- Sanctuary Scholarship for asylum seeker or refugee students
- Certificate in Counselling Skills Scholarship for home (UK) students
- Richard Hart Bursary for Black, Asian and minority ethnic home (UK) students from the Bristol area studying MSc Health Psychology, MSc Occupational Psychology or MSc Sport and Exercise Psychology
- Department of Applied Sciences Widening Participation Postgraduate Progression Scholarship.
UWE Bristol students are able to get information and advice on funding and financial support from our Student Money Service. This service also helps students with financial management and to grow their financial literacy.
Widening participation gallery
"The bursary has been a real breath of fresh air for me; it’s money that doesn’t have the promise of repayment attached to it and it lets my pocket feel that much lighter. It takes the edge off the rent, the weekly shop, and all those small payments that fester and cause stress when you least need it."
Staff in the Faculty of Arts Creative Industries and Education (ACE) have excellent contacts with schools and colleges and regularly engage with outreach work giving students a taster of some of the exciting courses we offer.
We have a particular focus on increasing applications from our under-represented groups. With this in mind, in 2020 we created two new bursaries.
The Paul Stephenson Bursary is for applicants from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds and the ACE Dean’s Bursary is for those who live in neighbourhoods that traditionally do not participate in higher education.
We award up to five bursaries a year in both schemes. Recipients get £1,000 a year for the first two years of study.
Further details of these ACE specific bursaries are available from Myra.evans@uwe.ac.uk.
"They told us a lot about university and what happens there, how to handle it and what to do."
Whilst we have been unable to visit schools and colleges to deliver activities face-to-face as part of the BoxED scheme for schools and colleges, we have sought to create remote versions of existing activities, where suitable, and create new online self-service activities for students to use at their convenience.
This new mode of delivery has presented challenges but also opportunities:
- Working with smaller and larger groups (4-400) with content delivered in one session or over many. This is a much more flexible and tailored way of working and has enhanced what we have previously been able to offer.
- For 2021, we will be looking to create collaborative programmes around popular themed times such as Maths, Arts or Science to look at how we can really maximise the number of participants in our remote events.
Our self-service activities, which have been available since November, are proving popular and provide an opportunity to rapidly develop curriculum engagement – activities have been created and promoted within a couple of weeks.
The FET outreach work aimed to achieve widening participation in recent years has focused primarily on the BoxED scheme for schools and colleges. FET BoxED activities (January 2019 to January 2020) had 4,607 participants in 25 different schools and colleges, half of which were Future Quest schools and colleges, where progression to higher education is lower than might be expected.
During 2020 (and continuing in 2021) we have been unable to visit schools and colleges to deliver activities face to face. To address this, we have sought to create remote versions of existing activities where suitable and to create new online self-service activities for students to use at their convenience. FET have provided six ‘Self Service BoxED Activities’ so far, which have had 2,896 views from November 2020-March 2021, a considerable achievement from all those involved in very difficult circumstances.
- The HAS Widening Participation team have a lead in each department and school and a BAME coordinator who work with all WP students to ensure their UWE Bristol journey is the best it can be.
- We share good news stories and advice in our monthly highlights.
- We have BAME impact groups in each department run by our BAME advocates to ensure we hear the voices of our BAME students and support the removal of the BAME awarding gap.
- Our inclusivity student reps are working with programmes to increase the range and diversity of our case studies and offer support for decolonising the curriculum.
- We are working on plans to develop specific support for any student who consider themselves neurodiverse.
- We have a monthly session called “oops I didn’t realise” run by staff and students to develop anti-racism strategies in the classroom.
- We are piloting sessions for mature students across the faculty to ensure a sense of belonging.
- We support students from undergraduate to postgraduate through “our scientists like me programme”.
- We are developing a males in to health support group.
- We are keen to hear from any one who has ideas or may need help so please do contact HASWPTEAM@uwe.ac.uk.
Read more about Cidella"The Equity mentoring scheme has empowered me as a freelance creative to build a network through collaboration. I have connected with and developed work with many creatives in Bristol."
Cidella Brown Fashion Communication student and Celebrating UWE Bristol Talent Mentee of the Year 2018/2019
Cidella was mentored as part of Equity, an award-winning programme aimed at providing personal and professional development opportunities for Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) students.
She was recently showcased in the 30 under 30 2020 list by Rife magazine.
"You stopped me from dropping out. You were amazing... You’ve told me everything will be OK and where to get help and how to apply. I was really worried about money and family stuff and you have put my hopes up and shown me I can do this."
Student Accessing UWE Cares support
Widening access for staff
Please take a look at our staff recruitment section for more information on how we widen participation for staff.
