AchieveAbility project wins praise from Minister
June 22 2006
A project led by the University of Westminster to highlight barriers many students with conditions such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and dyspraxia - known as specific learning difficulties - face in progressing through to university has won praise from a government minister.
Bill Rammell, Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, said there was a social and economic need to broaden access to higher education - and pointed to the AchieveAbility project as an example of good practice.
Speaking at a conference at the University to discuss research findings from the two-year project, Mr Rammell said: "We need to be thinking how we broaden access routes through to higher education for those with specific learning difficulties (SpLDs).
"As part of this we do need to see greater partnerships between the further and higher education sectors through initiatives such as lifelong learning.
"However, we can only achieve this if we work together on projects such as the one we are hearing about today," he said.
Research from the project - involving secondary schools, sixth form and further education colleges as well as universities and voluntary organisations -presented at the conference included a recommendation that more teaching staff development be available at both secondary and tertiary level to increase awareness of the problem. It also called for more consistent data collection across the education system.
Project director Katherine Hewlett, of the University of Westminster, said: "At the moment we can never truly know how many highly intellectual learners are being lost from the education system and this is a personal tragedy for those affected. It is also likely to adversely affect government targets to widen participation in higher education to include 50 per cent of 18-30 year-olds by 2010.
"We are calling for teachers to be trained in identification and awareness of different learning styles as part of an ongoing career development plan. It's also important that we end the inconsistency and incompatibility of data about SpLD learners."
Research by the Higher Education Academy, commissioned as part of the project, found that a lack of data system standardisation between sectors and institutions makes it very difficult to track SpLD students. As a consequence, "it is difficult to evaluate effectively the progression of learners with SpLD into higher education", the research found.
