There was an interesting article in last week’s Birmingham Post (20/10/11):

The four universities in Birmingham have produced a plan to encourage poorer pupils in Birmingham schools to aim at university. The scheme seems very like the Widening Participation scheme which we used at BCU from 2000 to 2008 (when staff cuts put an end to it). Tutors took the Fasttrack of my course Breakthrough to Learning into secondary schools and Colleges of Further Education once a week to teach the academic language which is the basis of success in school. The new plan proposes something similar together with other activities such as summer schools, which we proposed but did not get funding for.

It is not clear from the article whether they are proposing to use my course for the new plan. I haven’t yet tracked down anyone to tell me.

Anyone know anything about this?