Born to Rule?

Drawing on his acclaimed new book, Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite, Professor Friedman will share compelling evidence on how socio-economic background continues to shape access to elite positions in Britain. The session will also highlight findings from his book, The Class Ceiling, which looks at who gets in and who gets on in Britain’s professions. Professor Friedman will shed light on the barriers faced by those from less advantaged backgrounds, and the double disadvantages often faced by women and black and minority ethnic professionals from working-class backgrounds. He will finish by proposing some provocative policy ideas to break Britain’s class ceiling.

Professor Sam Friedman 

Professor Sam Friedman is a sociologist of class and inequality, and his research focuses in particular on the cultural dimensions of contemporary class division. He is the author of The Class Ceiling: Why it Pays to be Privileged, Comedy and Distinction: The Cultural Currency of a ‘Good’ Sense of Humour, and co-author of Social Class in the 21st Century. His new book (with Professor Aaron Reeves) Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite was named as a ‘2024 Book of the Year’ by The Economist and The Times, and won the 2025 Mary Douglas Book Prize from the American Sociological Association. He is also the co-editor of The British Journal of Sociology.

Beyond Access: Reimagining Widening Participation Through a Socially Just, Anti-Racist Progression Framework

Widening Participation (WP) has become an established feature of higher education in England, seeking to expand access and opportunity for students from historically underrepresented backgrounds (Hayton & Bengry-Howell, 2016). Yet substantial inequalities in continuation, degree outcomes and progression persist by ethnicity (Office for Students, 2025), while representation and belonging remain significant concerns for students from Global Majority communities (Cook, 2024). This raises questions about whether WP has been more successful in widening access than in transforming the institutional conditions shaping students’ experiences and outcomes.

Framed through a critical theoretical lens, the keynote brings Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction into dialogue with Critical Race Theory (CRT). While Bourdieu explains how inequalities are reproduced through the unequal distribution and recognition of capital, CRT extends this analysis by examining how racialised institutional cultures, structures and power relations shape belonging and progression. Together, they inform a socially just, anti-racist progression framework that reimagines WP as an institutional transformation agenda rather than solely an access agenda.

The keynote argues that mentoring, peer support, sponsorship, belonging initiatives and curriculum transformation remain important but must be accompanied by institutional change. Ultimately, it poses a fundamental challenge: if WP is to become a genuinely socially just project, are universities prepared to dismantle the discriminatory structures, policies and hegemonic ideologies that reproduce inequality, enabling all students to belong, succeed, progress and realise their aspirations throughout the student lifecycle?

Dr Pere Ayling 

Dr Pere Ayling is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Business, Arts, Social Sciences and Technology (BASST). Pere was born in Nigeria and has over 10 years of teaching experience in early years, primary and higher education. Pere is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her area of interest is sociology of education and race, with a focus on the temporal and geographical characteristics of inequality and privilege.

Pere has several publications, all of which are closely linked to her area of interest and specialism and focus on how social class, gender and race, as well as (dis)ability, intersect to (re)produce ‘privilege’ and ‘inequality’ in education and society more broadly. Her most recent publications examined how elite Nigerian parents are attempting to reproduce their class position by choosing to educate their children in ‘white’ British private schools, while another explored the ethical dilemmas involved in researching elites. Her work on Nigerian elites has received national and international attention, leading to speaking engagements at various conferences and symposia and invitations from well-known scholars in the field of social class and elite studies. Pere is a member of the British Sociological Association and the British Educational Research Association. She is also a core member of the BSA Elite study group.

Chris previously served as the OfS’s first Director for Fair Access and Participation between 2018 and 2021, returning to the role on an interim basis in 2025. He is Professor of Practice in Education Policy at the University of Birmingham, where he conducts research, teaching and public engagement on higher education policy and practice. Chris held senior roles at the Higher Education Funding Council for England, including Director of Policy, overseeing initiatives such as the Teaching Excellence Framework, the National Student Survey and Uni Connect. He is a trustee and fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, a trustee of the Society for Research into Higher Education, a Marshall Scholarships Commissioner, and a board member of Medr, the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research in Wales.

Tony is  Pro Vice Chancellor Education and Student Experience and Professor of Addictive Behaviour Science at LSBU. I am also Deputy Director of PHIRST South Bank. His particular research interest is on understanding the needs of individuals who experience harms from substances and behaviours which we generally think of as being 'addictive'. He is interested in understanding how we can both help people to recognise the harms that can arise, but also exploring better ways of supporting people who do experience those harms. As  Deputy Director of our NIHR-funded research centre, PHIRST South Bank, he works closely with Local Authorities across the UK to evaluate a wide range of public health interventions.

Outside of my substantive role at LSBU, he is also the Chair of London Uni Connect. This is a partnership, funded by the Office for Students, to deliver widening access and outreach initiatives in schools and colleges across London. Across the wider education sector, he regularly contributes articles and analyses on current policy topics, with a particular emphasis on issues related to equality of opportunity for underrepresented and disadvantaged students.

Fiona is the Co-Director of the Unite Foundation, joining at the start of 2021. Supported by a small team, the Unite Foundation delivers a unique university accommodation scholarship for care leavers and estranged students across the UK as well as advocating for a home at university for all care experienced and estranged students. . Her career has focused mainly on the youth and charitable sectors. Previously Fiona was Director of Partnerships and Operations for Step Up To Serve, the organisation that ran the #iwill campaign. Her time at Step Up To Serve also included a secondment at the National Lottery Community Fund where she led the development of a £70million fund to support youth social action. In addition Fiona is the Chair of the Longleigh Foundation, a charitable foundation that supports social housing residents.

Sustained Outreach in Practice: Evaluating Leeds to Success Across the Secondary Lifecycle

In a context of increasing uncertainty about the value of higher education, sustained and targeted outreach is critical to addressing entrenched inequalities. This presentation will explore ‘Leeds to Success’, a multi-year widening participation programme supporting students from Years 7–11 who are underrepresented in higher tariff institutions. Designed as a progressive, theme-based intervention, the programme integrates attainment support, higher education awareness, and skills development through workshops, campus experiences, and sustained contact with trained outreach staff.

Drawing on recent evaluation findings, the presentation will demonstrate how the programme is successfully reaching its intended audience, with over half of participants from the most disadvantaged IMD quintile. Pre- and post-intervention data shows measurable gains in students’ confidence, academic self-efficacy, understanding of higher education pathways, and readiness for progression, particularly within the newly established Year 11 strand.

The presentation will critically reflect on challenges including tracking longitudinal impact, securing evaluation consent, and ensuring consistent gains in students’ sense of belonging. It will also explore how iterative programme design, cross-year continuity, and embedded evaluation support continuous improvement.

Further Reading

Find out more about our Leeds to Success programme here

Equity with equality? Can contextualising everyone widen participation for medical admissions?

Widening participation (WP) outcomes in UK medical admissions have not changed 2007-2018, partly due to inequity in selection. This presentation discusses a study that models the effects of a novel method of contextualising applicants, on widening participation

In this study 1084 English school leaver applicants to a single medical school were studied over two years, using data from their public exams taken 2 years pre-application (GCSE) and recent admissions test (UCAT). Widening participation was defined by postcode. Two shortlists were modelled for a pre-determined number of 500; one ranked on UCAT total score, and the other on a metric that contextualised applicants’ GCSE grades against their schools' average GCSE performance.  A significant difference was found in the WP characteristics of the two shortlists; 46% by contextualisation and 32.2% by UCAT (Chisquare p<0.00001). As WP covers 42% of postcodes, the “contextualise everyone” method achieves equity.

Conventionally, contextual admissions identify individuals belonging to certain groups and gives them preferential treatment. This policy is vulnerable to political influences on which groups should be favoured. We propose that changing the rules for everyone, by using a relative attainment instead of simple absolute attainment metric, benefits from treating applicants equally; and could promote equity through widening participation, and may better weather political changes.

Further Reading

Chan, P., Anthony, A., Quinlan, K., Smith, S., & Holland, C. (2024). Equity with equality? Contextualising everyone can widen participation in medical school admissions. Medical Teacher, 46(7), 931–938.

How can poetry inform curriculum decolonisation?

Scholars have emphasised that higher education in the global North remains deeply embedded in Eurocentric epistemologies. These are presented as objective, universal, and disembodied, while global South, Black, Indigenous, and other non-Eurocentric knowledge systems are ignored, delegitimised, or dismissed. Such practices sustain imaginaries of epistemological homogeneity and hegemony. As a result, the university widens social inequalities along lines of class, race, gender, power, etc. In response, this ongoing project explores how learning beyond disciplinary boundaries can challenge existing hierarchies of knowledge and support the development of more inclusive, socially just curricula. 

As a method, poetry workshops are being conducted across two universities in Brazil and the UK, involving various groups – students, educators, staff, and community stakeholders – from different backgrounds. By inviting participants to engage in poetic co-creation and dialogue, the project opens space for the affective, embodied, and artistic dimensions of alternative forms of knowledge. The outcomes of this project will inform the development of practical recommendations for institutional change, with a particular focus on widening participation of marginalised groups and decolonising curricula.

Further Reading

Bhambra, G. K. et al. (eds.) (2018). Decolonising the University. London: Pluto Press.

Cupples, J. & Grosfoguel, R. (eds.). (2019). Unsettling Eucrocentrism in the westernized university. London: Routledge.

Davis, C. (2019). Sampling Poetry, Pedagogy, and Protest to Build Methodology: Critical Poetic Inquiry as Culturally Relevant Method. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(1), 114-124. 

Kara, H. (2015). Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A practical guide. Bristol: Policy Press.

Prendergast, M. (2009) “Poem is what?” Poetic inquiry in qualitative social science research. International Review of Qualitative Research, 1 (4), 541-568. 

Rufino, L. (2021). Vence-demanda: educação e descolonização. Rio de Janeiro: Mórula.

Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London: Zed Books.

Walsh, C. (2009). Interculturalidad crítica y pedagogía de-colonial: apuestas (des)de el in-surgir, re-existir y re-vivir. Educação Online, (4), 1-29.

Enhancing Student Support through Proactive Engagement at the University of Leeds

As higher education faces increasing financial, social and wellbeing challenges, early intervention has become an essential tool for addressing barriers that disproportionately affect students from underrepresented backgrounds. Engagement Calling at the University of Leeds uses data-driven triggers to identify students who may benefit from additional support and proactively reaches out via text message, email and telephone.

Through personalised conversations, dedicated Engagement Callers provide students with an opportunity to discuss challenges they may be experiencing and connect them with appropriate support. This holistic approach brings together services across the University to support students' academic success, financial wellbeing, sense of belonging and personal wellbeing.

The programme operates across all faculties and schools, with additional targeted projects designed to support specific student groups where emerging needs have been identified.

This presentation will explore how Engagement Calling contributes to student success through early intervention and proactive support. The data and systems used to identify students, common themes emerging from student conversations, referral and intervention processes and the benefits and challenges of implementing a university-wide proactive engagement model will be discussed. Delegates will gain insights into how data-informed approaches can help institutions identify and respond to student needs, supporting continuation and reducing inequalities in outcomes.

Practice and Evaluation Learnings – A Creative Summer School for Underrepresented Young People

This paper will reflect on the delivery of a creative summer school for 13–16-year-olds at Bath Spa University over the past four years. It will outline our aims, ambitions, and outcomes and reflect on our learnings from practice, focussing on:

• Different engagement types: learnings around how participants each year engage differently in methods

• Flexibility: Finding the need to be more flexible to meet the needs of a range of young people to obtain useful evaluation data, and 

• Creative methods based on the nature of the programme.

We will then present on evaluation findings from the past year, including our learnings from creative evaluation failures, and share our plans moving forward with examples from our new evaluation methodology.

Further Reading

Comunian, R., Wreyford, N., Dent, T., O'Brien, D., & Read, T. (2023). Making the Creative Majority: A report for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Creative Diversity on ‘What Works’ to support diversity and inclusion in creative education and the talent pipeline, with a focus on the 16+ age category. 

Holt-White, E., O’Brien, D., Brook, O., & Taylor, M. (2024). A Class Act. Social Mobility and the Creative Industries. Sutton Trust

Ramaiah, B. (2025). Cultural Learning Alliance Report Card 2025. Cultural Learning Alliance. 

Tambling, P., & Bacon, S. (2023). The arts in schools: Foundations for the future. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

Tate. (2020) What next? Supporting young people from under-represented backgrounds into creative careers at Tate and across the sector.

Pedagogical Innovation to Improve Student Engagement and Retention with Non-Traditional Learners

This paper explores pedagogical innovations that improve engagement, confidence, and retention among non-traditional learners, including student carers, international, working, and first-generation students. Grounded in Universal Design for Learning, Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory, and Tinto’s Student Integration Model, the study examines UDL, audio-visual feedback, AI-supported dashboards, and structured deadline extensions among 200 students. Findings demonstrate strong effects on engagement and retention, with confidence and engagement mediating retention. The paper recommends scalable, inclusive, technology-supported approaches that respond to students’ lived experiences.

Why deep targeted engagement is worth the investment

Against a backdrop of financial challenge, many in the sector are reconsidering approaches to university access. Where can programmes save costs? How can we reach more young people with less? Why offer targeted programming when we could provide support for all?

We recently engaged Cosmos to undertake an external evaluation of two multi-touchpoint STEM Outreach programmes at Imperial College London. The programmes both engage a cohort of participants from year 10 through 13, with STEM Potential focused on disadvantaged young people and STEM Futures targeting Black Heritage young people specifically.

The findings from this evaluation helped us understand the value in both programmes targeted, resource-intensive nature. While programme format choices like in-person delivery, practical sessions in labs, and excursions are costly, these elements strengthened outcomes for participants and provide experiences they would be unlikely to access elsewhere. Similarly, the deliberate targeting of each programme allowed them to create community and experiences that were critical to their impact on belonging and STEM identity. Together with Cosmos, we have translated the highlights from this evaluation into a practitioner toolkit to support others seeking to design, refine or make the case to senior leaders for similar resource intensive outreach programmes.

Further Reading

Designing Inclusive STEM Programmes: Insights from Evaluation, practitioner toolkit available to download from our website here

Teaching for the future: Thinking, Metacognition and learner agency for young people

This session shares learning from the first academic year of a two-year collaborative project between IntoUniversity and Anglia Ruskin University (funded by the OfS), exploring how metacognition can be explicitly taught to primary aged learners in widening access contexts.

The collaborative project addresses a gap in access and participation practice. Metacognition has been strongly associated with educational and learner success but there has been limited evidence on how these capabilities can be developed through early intervention outreach and how they might strengthen educational progression.

Against a backdrop of changing perceptions of higher education and growing uncertainty about future pathways, this project examines how metacognitive skills can provide a foundation for learner agency, critical thinking and informed decision making. We explore how developing these skills in The Big Thinking Project can create positive learning experiences and might support future educational progression for young people from underrepresented backgrounds.

You will hear the emerging findings of this mixed methods, quasi-experimental evaluation from the first full academic year of delivery across pilot centres. You will also will gain insight into sustained early intervention practice, the collaborative working between a third-sector organisation and a university, and how the project is being refined and scaled as it enters its second year.

Ditching the Deficit Model: Reframing Vocational Learners Through Strengths and Equity

Vocational qualifications are a key route into higher education, supporting social mobility for many students, including 37% of Black students and 44% of White working-class students. However, a persistent challenge remains: these students are less likely to graduate with a 2:1 or above, often reflecting a mismatch between applied, skills-based prior learning and traditional university cultures.

This session explores how we can better support diverse learners by shifting from “fixing” students to designing courses. We present a practical framework spanning four areas:

1. Lived Experience Workshop: Working in partnership with students and the Students’ Union to create resources for staff to better understand and respond to intersecting challenges such as vocational qualifications, disability and being first generation.

2. Prior Learning Insights: Using entry pathway skills maps to help staff recognise and respond to different starting points.

3. Strengths-based coaching: Supporting students to identify and apply their skills from vocational study and extend their effective learning approaches.

4. Making the hidden curriculum visible and unavoidable: Co-creating resources such as “What I wish I knew” to demystify expectations, careers and extra-curricular opportunities.

By building on students’ existing knowledge and experiences, this approach supports more inclusive learning environments and closing awarding gaps.

Further Reading

Bathmaker, A.-M. (2021). Constructing a graduate career future: Working with Bourdieu to understand transitions from university to employment for students from working‐class backgrounds in England. European Journal of Education, 56(1)

Hastings, J. & Noyes, A. (2024). Transitions to university from vocational and academic colleges: exploring alignment and discontinuity, Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 29:4, 561-580

Katartzi, E., & Hayward, G. (2020). Transitions to higher education: the case of students with vocational background. Studies in Higher Education, 45(12)

Mitton, L., Hensby, A. (2024). Bringing Vocational Qualifications into the Inclusivity Agenda: The Case of the BTEC. In: Hensby, A., Adewumi, B. (eds) Race, Capital, and Equity in Higher Education. Palgrave Studies in Race, Inequality and Social Justice in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. 

Dilnot, C., Macmillan, L. and Wyness, G. (2023). "The path increasingly travelled: Vocational entry qualifications, socioeconomic status and university outcomes." British Educational Research Journal, 49(6), pp. 1142–1160

Myhill, D., Banerjee, P., Herbert, D., Robinson, C., Kaniadakis, A., Lawson, H., Venner, S., Morris, R., Mackenzie, H., and Kinderkhedia, M. (2020). Transforming transitions: Addressing barriers to student success. Final report to the Office for Students. London: Office for Students.

Conscious Practice: Reframing Widening Participation through Equitable Institutional Practice

Conscious Practice is an institutional innovation project at Manchester Metropolitan University contributing to the strategic theme of Authentic and Flexible Assessment. It explores how strengthening reflective practice among educators can support student success by creating more equitable learning environments in increasingly diverse higher education contexts.

While widening participation initiatives often focus on student-facing interventions, Conscious Practice argues that educator development is equally important in creating equitable learning environments that support student success. Drawing on the experiences of racially diverse academic staff who have completed StellarHE's leadership programme, the project examines how leadership learning shapes understandings of authentic, flexible and racially inclusive assessment. It aims to develop a staff-focused adaptation of the Racially Inclusive Practice in Assessment Guidance (RIPIAG) alongside a digital archive of narratives and artefacts to support institutional learning and reflective practice.

Rather than viewing widening participation as an agenda delivered to specific groups of students, the project reframes it as an equitable institutional practice, co-created through educator development, leadership and assessment. This presentation introduces the context and emerging insights, inviting discussion about how co-creating equitable institutional practice can strengthen assessment and improve student success.

Further Reading

Arday, J. and Jones, C. (2022) ‘Same storm, different boats: the impact of COVID-19 on Black students and academic staff in UK and US higher education’. Higher Education.

Austerlitz, N., Blythman, M., Grove-White, A., Jones, B.A., Jones, C.A., Morgan, S., Orr, S., Shreeve, A. and Vaughan, S. (2008) 'Mind the gap: expectations, ambiguity and pedagogy within art and design higher education', in The Student Experience in Art and Design Higher Education: Drivers for Change. Cambridge: Jill Rogers Associates Limited, pp. 124–148.

Campbell, P.I. and Duke, L. (2023) An evaluation of the Racially Inclusive Practice in Assessment Guidance (RIPIAG) intervention on students' and staff experiences of assessment in higher education: A multi-method study. Leicester: University of Leicester.

Lifelong Education Institute (2026) Widening participation: progress continues, but is it enough?

McArthur, J. (2023) ‘Rethinking authentic assessment: work, well-being, and society’. Higher Education, 86(6), pp. 1301–1315.

Office for Students (2025) Access and participation plans.

Office for Students (2025) Equality of opportunity risk register.

Sambell, K. and Brown, S. (2021) Changing assessment for good: Principles and practice. York: Advance HE.

Schön, D.A. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books.

Tate, S. and Bagguley, P. (2019) ‘Building the anti-racist university: Next steps’, Race Ethnicity and Education, 22(3), pp. 507–526.

From Primary School to Teacher Development: A Lifecycle Approach to Widening Participation

Recognising the transformative power of innovative, inclusive and entrepreneurial education and research, the Anglia Ruskin University Schools and Colleges Engagement Team has collaborated with stakeholders across the student lifecycle to develop targeted outreach initiatives that address inequalities in higher education access and participation. This presentation explores three evidence-informed programmes; Reach for the Stars, Thinking Beyond Horizons and Beyond the Label, and demonstrates how stakeholder voices have shaped their design and delivery.

Reach for the Stars engages Year 5 pupils at a critical stage of educational development, supporting literacy attainment while introducing university pathways and future career opportunities. Thinking Beyond Horizons, developed in partnership with Manor Drive Secondary Academy and academics at ARU Peterborough, uses project-based learning to provide stretch and challenge opportunities for gifted and talented students from WP backgrounds whose aspirations or awareness of HE options may be limited. Beyond the Label supports teachers through tailored CPD, equipping them with the knowledge, confidence and strategies required to better engage white working-class boys and address barriers to HE progression.

By sharing the development and implementation of these programmes, this session highlights how collaborative, evidence-based outreach can create meaningful educational opportunities, raise aspirations and contribute to reducing inequalities for under-represented communities.

From Diagnosis to Design: Using the Working Diagnosis Model to Close Disability‑Related Awarding Gaps

This session presents the Working Diagnosis Model; a practical, legally grounded framework developed at Buckinghamshire New University to tackle structural inequity in disability support. The model reframes support around barrier identification, impairment effect, and reasonability, enabling timely and anticipatory adjustments without requiring formal diagnosis. It integrates validated screening tools, multi-source evidence, and ethical communication of uncertainty to ensure students receive support at the point of need.

Further Reading

Advice note for the higher education sector from the legal case of University of Bristol vs Abrahart

NADP: The University of Bristol v Dr Robert Abrahart The High Court Appeal and its Implications

NADP: Sector implications of the Bristol case: A legal perspective

BNU’s Reasonable Adjustments policy