I’ve recently been reading about research into working class students and their experience of Higher Education. Wolfgang Lehmann has written quite extensively about the topic, and describes the challenges working class students may find when entering higher education, experiencing “a ‘‘foreign’’ environment in which they feel like cultural outsiders” (2013:2). The higher education environment is, Lehmann suggests, classed, and as working class students come into contact with

“Positive image is vital for the West” my prize winning schoolgirl essay published In the Western Morning News, May 24th 1997 Tidying up, I just found an essay I wrote when I was 16 which was published in the Western Morning News after it was placed second in the Western Morning News – South West Enterprise Limited Business Essay competition in 1997. This is the opening of the essay, I think you’ll see why it made me laugh….! “As a whole the Westcountry has a poor economy, ch

Well, this is interesting, today I came across a report from HEFCE: ‘trends in young participation in higher education’ which looks at participation rates in Higher Education across England. The research finds that “Areas where young people are least likely to go into HE are located along the coast, in many former industrial towns in the Midlands and the North, and in rural parts of the South West, the East Midlands and the East of England.” Although my research focuses on th