Chapter 1: Access to Higher Education: from Margin to Mainstream

This chapter considers the development of the Access to higher education (HE) course from a historical point of view in order to show the tensions that have existed in the different perspectives held by practitioners, institutions and governmental policy makers about the value and function of Access education. For some commentators Access courses were examples of radical, practitioner-led, collaborative and student-centred education (Burke, 2002; Parry, 1996; Williams, 1997). For others they became increasingly more like ‘A’ levels and over time became very narrow in their scope. It could be argued that access education should be about a wider access to knowledge production, not necessarily to do with going to university (Stowell, 1995; Tight, 1993). It is also possible to suggest that when Access courses were inculcated within the mainstream educational system in the late 1980s, practitioners had to fight to hold onto some of the attributes that made Access distinctive. For example, curricula were designed with the locality in mind rather than being nationally prescribed. Policy documents and the research undertaken for publications such as the Journal of Access Studies have been invaluable in telling this story, as are the narratives provided by Brian and Ruth who are Access practitioners who have worked in this field since the 1970s and have lived through many of the changes discussed in this chapter.