Research at the University of St Andrews is working towards making entry to higher education more transparent, and in that sense fairer. Our aim is to provide simple tools that help:
- institutions to assess an applicant's potential
- policy-makers to rethink some of their guidance with regards to widening access
- students make their educational choice.
Most recently, our research is drawn from the Access for Rural Communities (ARC) project. Some elements of this research have already been published in two academic journals and presented at various conferences and seminars, including the Teachers Together conference and the Learning for All 2016 event. It has been further developed in two main directions: the construction of a Scottish state secondary school index capturing education attainment, social inequality and rural or urban deprivation and an online portal allowing Scottish pupils to explore subjects, degree programmes and professions that match their interests and personality at their own pace.
- Access to Higher Education for Scottish rural communities: an exploratory analysis
- Lasselle, L, 2016, ‘Barriers to higher education entry – a Scottish rural perspective’, Scottish Educational Review, 48, 1, 78-88
- Learning for All 2016 (joint national conference of the Scottish Funding Council and the National Union of Students Scotland on progress in widening access to further and higher education), event for practitioners, Lessons from the Access for Rural Communities project, Perth, March 2016, Mrs G Bisset, Dr L Lasselle and Dr G Kirby.