Abstract
What contribution might social anthropology make to our understanding of the consequences of successive British governments’ attempts over the last two decades to widen participation in England’s universities? In this article I answer this question by examining a foundation year programme at a university in the nation’s former industrial heartland. Drawing on anthropological literature on rites of passage I analyse working-class participants’ experiences of this admission process. Its creators envisaged it as a rite that would seamlessly assimilate ‘diverse students’ into the university body, but I argue that it does not do so. Instead, as is to be expected from a rite, it marks participants. It thus prevents them from ever just being students in the eyes of themselves and their fellows.
Highlights
When many people in England think about admission to the country’s universities, they perhaps have in mind results day.i This is a well-established ritual where one journeys to school, meets one’s compatriots, and collects one’s public examination results
Within England’s tertiary education sector, the foundation year programme refers to a year-long preparatory course designed to provide a means for ‘home’ students from what are deemed ‘diverse’, ‘unrepresented’ or ‘nontraditional’ backgrounds to enter university.iv In contrast to the relative uniformity of examinations as a national, civic rite of passage, the foundation year programme’s implementation has varied tremendously throughout England
Liz’s position that people who denigrated the foundation year programme in such a way were ignorant of how poverty affected teaching standards and that the significance of impoverished instruction was that hard work did not always result in success mirrored many of Colin Lacey’s - a pioneering anthropologist of education in England - criticisms of the grammar schools and their qualifications
Summary
When many people in England think about admission to the country’s universities, they perhaps have in mind results day.i This is a well-established ritual where one journeys to school, meets one’s compatriots, and collects one’s public examination results. Because the entry tariffs were different, ordinarily applicants were as Declan, a white working-class nineteen-year-old Englishman from Brighton and member of the third cohort, pointed out “A star, A students, like straight A star students at A-Level”, but foundation year applicants were required to have completed three A-Level courses and to meet specific criteria relating to their social circumstances Some examples of the latter included having attended a school with lower-than-average A-level scores, going to a school where there were more students qualifying for more free school meals than the national average, or being the first in their family to attend university. She went on to say that “you only need 40% and on the foundation year I think everybody did get 40%”
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