The seventh annual NEON Summer Symposium is being held on Thursday 13^th and Friday 14^th June 2019 at Lancaster University. The 2018 event was attended by 220 delegates from across the country, making it the most well-attended to date, 2019 is set to be even bigger!

The theme of the 2019 Summer Symposium will be “The third age of widening access”.

We are entering a new era for widening access and participation in higher education. After the focus on access for working class adults gave way in the 2000s and 2010s to one on young people entering higher education (HE), we are now moving to the third age of widening access where access and outcomes share centre stage. But will this new era look any differently from the past?

The conference will look at where we are now in access and participation in HE, where we have been and where we want to go. Can we learn from the experiences of the past 20 years? What does successful outcomes for learners from under-represented backgrounds actually mean? Can we make equitable access more central to the missions of HEIs, schools and employers than it has been in the past?

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 seventh Summer Symposium will be the most important event for those working in the field in 2019.