Pembroke Outreach Scheme Shortlisted for THE Award

The Pembroke College Access and Outreach programme has been included on a shortlist of six schemes, one of which will win this year’s Times Higher Education Award for Widening Participation or Outreach Initiative of the Year. Pembroke’s focus is on on raising the aspirations of sixth formers in Hackney, East London, and the South Cheshire/Manchester region.

The current “Pem-Brooke” scheme began a decade ago as a partnership with Brooke House Sixth Form College (BSix) in Hackney, with the aim of broadening the social and intellectual horizons of young people in that borough. At its core is the belief that sustained contact is the best way to equip students with the necessary skills for entry into the country’s best universities. Pem-Brooke is therefore unashamedly academic and subject-driven.

Sixth-formers who apply to join the scheme alongside their A-level studies, are interviewed for the places available and then spend a year following a demanding and stretching academic programme of lectures and classes provided by Pembroke academics, as wells as benefiting from mentoring by Pembroke students. There is a Study Skills School in Hackney during the Easter holidays, and the climax of the year is a week-long residential summer school held at Pembroke College during which participants are treated to a taste of life as an Oxford undergraduate.

“Our aim is for students to feel better prepared to make an application to Pembroke, to Oxford or to other competitive universities” explains Dr Peter Claus, Pembroke’s Access Fellow who leads the scheme. “We hope that, over a full year of work, we can give pupils the experience of undergraduate teaching and some knowledge about the Oxford admissions process so that they will be able to look beyond the myths and fell confident about applying to Oxford in the knowledge that we are truly open to all those with talent.”

The success of the Pem-Brooke scheme has been evident. Within just five years, the number of BSix students winning places at Russell Group Universities increased by 500%, and many other schools from the Hackney borough are now taking part in Pem-Brooke. Next month five of the 2011-12 Pem-Brooke cohort will take up places at Oxford University, but they will not be the first – in 2010 Oxbridge places were secured.

The model of Pem-Brooke has now been extended to the regions around Manchester for which Pembroke acts as the link College for Oxford University. In partnership with South Cheshire College and Ashton Sixth Form College "Pembroke North" has been established. Last month saw the first year group of Pembroke North participants complete their course at the same Pembroke residential Summer School. We look forward to extending the scheme further in the South Cheshire area, as well as founding a new hub in west London, in the coming months.

The annual Times Higher Education Awards celebrate the achievements of the UK higher education sector, and highlight particular excellence in a range of areas. The Widening Participation or Outreach Initiative of the Year award will go to “the most imaginative and innovative project that encourages people from non-traditional backgrounds to enter higher education or extends the reach of the institution to new areas of activity”. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony in London on 28th November.

For more about Pem-Brooke, Pembroke North, and especially its residential Summer School please see our Access News page.

Information about Times Higher Education Awards 2013 is available at http://www.the-awards.co.uk/