Summer Symposium 2021

The ninth annual NEON Summer Symposium is being held on Thursday 1st and Friday 2nd July – ONLINE.

We are looking forward to making the 2021 Symposium the best and biggest event so far!

The theme of the 2021 Summer Symposium will be “Access, Participation and the Post-Covid Tertiary System”.

As the higher education system, like the rest of the world, grapples with the Covid-19 and its impact this year’s symposium will focus on the how the pandemic will interact with broader social and political trends to shape the work of those in the access and participation field. Alongside the pandemic there is a desire amongst policymakers to re-shape the curriculum at Level 3, extend provision of higher technical qualifications and reform the higher education admission system to ‘level up’ opportunities across the country. In this context the symposium will consider how access and participation work can be pivotal to enabling what could be a very different tertiary system to provide opportunities to succeed for students from all backgrounds.

The conference will look at the impact of Covid-19 on access/participation work and innovations in delivery that have emerged as well research and practice with learners undertaking vocational qualifications or studying in further education settings and/or collaborations between further education and higher education. We would also examine the relationship between higher education participation/access & participation practice and inequalities associated with region, gender, ethnicity, place and other protected characteristics.

Bringing together key figures from across the education sector, policymakers and employers with organisations from across sectors committed to social mobility through widening access to HE, thus NEON’s ninth Summer Symposium will be the most important event for those working in the field in 2021.

The NEON Summer Symposium – the event for widening access professionals you can’t afford to miss.

Event information:

Draft Agenda

Keynote Speakers

• Matt Western MP
• Andrea Jenkyns MP
• Bill Watkin, Chief Executive, Sixth Form Colleges Association
• Larissa Kennedy, National President, NUS
• Sander Kristel, Chief Operations Officer, UCAS
• Sarah Howls, Head of Access & Participation Funding and Programmes, Office for Students
• Professor Timothy Quine, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education), University of Exeter
• Eddie Playfair, Senior Policy Manager, Association of Colleges
• Yasmin Haque, Student, University of East London and NEON Student of the Year 2021

Price

Who should attend?

The NEON Summer Symposium is supported by:

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