The Flying Start Project

Practices, Communities and Policies to Ease the Transition to University Writing and Assessment.

Flying Start is a collaborative project to help bridge the gap between Further and Higher Education. Writing is crucial to student success at university: for assessment, for learning within disciplines and for employability. This widening participation project takes a cross-sector approach to bridge the ‘separate worlds’ of writing and assessment at pre-university and undergraduate level and ease the transition between the two. There are three strands to the project:

• The Practice Stand
• The Community Strand
• The Policy Strand

An overview of the project is available in this Poster . Further details of each strand are given below.

The project is funded by the Higher Education Academy National Teaching Fellowship Scheme Project Strand. Liverpool Hope University is the lead institution, and the collaborating partner institutions include the University of Derby, Edge Hill University, Queen Mary University London and Nottingham Trent University.

Background to the project

Further education alone does not sufficiently prepare students for university study. In a recent poll only 26% of university undergraduates strongly agreed that studying for A levels adequately prepared them for university (ICM Research, 2006; Smith, 2004).  A comparative study of teaching methods by Ballinger (2003) found that A level students were not expected to study autonomously, and development of critical analytic skills was mainly limited to preparation for specific exam questions, whereas HE students were expected to be more autonomous, and were encouraged to develop more general analytical skills for assessment.

A major widening participation priority has been to provide preparatory support prior to university entry (Robertson & Hillman, 1997) including outreach work at schools and FE colleges (Yorke & Thomas, 2003). One transition programme focusing on the skills required for coping with teaching and assessment in HE, delivered just prior to entry to university, significantly increased HE retention and completion (Knox, 2005). Concern, however, continues about transitions from schools to universities (Times Higher Education, 2008). There is a demonstrable need for greater shared understandings of learning and assessment across the FE and HE sectors (Birnie, 1999).

Training pre-university students in decontextualised writing skills is unlikely to ease transitions, but working within theoretical frameworks of epistemological beliefs and approaches to learning is more likely to be successful.  There is considerable research showing links between epistemological beliefs and approaches to learning (Chan, 2003; Hammer, 1994; Roth & Roychoudhury, 1994), which not only impacts on how easily students adjust to university teaching but also on how easily they are able to cope with written assignments (Kember, 2001). While school students’ epistemological beliefs are less sophisticated than those of university students, there is evidence suggesting that interventions could help students develop epistemological beliefs more appropriate to university study (Cano, 2005; Gill et al, 2004). Assessment practices provide a practical focus for such interventions.

A developing feature of UK post-compulsory education is the emergence of dual-sector institutions providing FE and HE, and universities with close links to schools and FE colleges (Burns, 2007). Those institutions have developed transition programmes focusing on generic study skills, peer mentoring, and residential experiences, which have been shown to improve university retention, progression and completion (Bathmaker, 2006). At both Liverpool Hope and Derby there are well established Widening Participation Compact programmes that guarantee agreed numbers of university places for students achieving ‘lower’ grades.

At Liverpool Hope there is a dedicated Widening Participation Centre under the remit of the PVC for External Relations and Widening Participation. The Centre has several years’ experience of providing and evaluating WP initiatives, including a 4-year cross-sector collaborative project (the Syndicate Project) funded by AimHigher Greater Merseyside. The most recent initiative is the STARS project, a Compact Scheme where 120 year-12 students from 22 local schools work with Hope undergraduate mentors in a programme of monthly contact, special events and a four-day project focussed on writing for assessment at A level. The programme focuses on the synoptic A level paper and reflective writing, as well as transferable competencies related to university assessment criteria.

At Derby, the first UK integrated dual-sector institution, there is an FE college offering A levels on over 16 subjects, and a Compact Scheme with over 50 partner schools, whose students made over 11,000 individual applications to study at HE at the University in 2006-07. Over 90% achieve the grades they need and over 70% go on to enrol. The Compact Scheme employs undergraduate students as student mentors and Compact Assistants in schools and colleges (www.derby.ac.uk/fpl/partnerships), as well as operating an award-winning web site providing information about choosing courses, applying to university, study skills and being an effective student.