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Facilitated and chaired by: Dr Rita Hordósy who is the co-convenor of the Student Access and Experience Network. For more details about the network and its activities, please click here.

Overview

The event explores how widening participation (WP), fair access and student experiences in English higher education have evolved amid persistent inequalities. Current discourses are dominated by institutions, policymakers, and culture‑war narratives, while student and community voices remain marginal. National policies such as Access and Participation Plans have strengthened evaluation and systematised delivery but also risk reducing WP to compliance. Tensions remain between meritocratic framings and social‑justice aims, especially around contextual admissions. A shift from “getting in” to “getting on” reflects recognition that belonging, transitions, and graduate outcomes matter, though financial pressures in light of the cost of living crisis continue to undermine these goals. Students often experience WP labels as externally imposed rather than self‑affirming. The conversation will explore the need for intersectional approaches, renewed maintenance support, and collaborative work across research, practice, and policy to create genuinely transformative change.

Schedule

Speaker bios

Rhiannon Jones is a PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge and an Access and Outreach Officer at Jesus College Cambridge. Her research examines how widening participation is conceptualised and enacted across government policy, university culture, and individual practice in English higher education. Prior to her doctoral study, she worked as an Evaluation Officer for a Uni Connect Hub, where she led evaluation and impact reporting for widening participation programmes. She has also worked as a Learning Assistant in a secondary school, supporting students with special educational needs and disabilities. These professional experiences coupled with her personal identity as someone from a WP background inform her research interest in the politics of WP and the tensions between social justice and theoretically hollow performance-based accountability. Her broader research interests include tackling inequalities in higher education, reflected in her work on the Lifting the Barriers to Black Academia project.

Kimberley B Simms is Head of Widening Access and Community Engagement at Nottingham Trent University, where she leads pre 16 outreach, staff and student volunteering, community engagement, and place based systemic change initiatives. Kim is committed to improving educational equity through data informed, evidence based, and innovative practice. Her professional interests span early years engagement, community partnerships, and the development of impactful widening participation initiatives. She welcomes discussion on innovative, collaborative approaches to widening access and community engagement.

Chris Millward is Professor of Practice in Education Policy at the University of Birmingham and Interim Director of Fair Access and Participation at the Office for Students, a position he also held from 2018-21.  Prior to these roles, Chris was Director of Policy at the Higher Education Funding Council for England and Head of Research Programmes at the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.  Chris also serves on the boards of MEDR, the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research in Wales, the Academy of Social Sciences and the Society for Research into Higher Education, and he is a Marshall Scholarships Commissioner.

Neil Harrison a professor of education and social justice at the University of Exeter.  He has worked in widening access for over 30 years as a practitioner, educator and researcher.  He is currently leading a study focusing on post-16 educational pathways for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, funded by the Nuffield Foundation.