Faculty of ScienceWidening Participation Activities 2012/13 - FUNDING PROPOSAL

Guidance about the institutional and faculty approach to Widening Participation is provided within appendix 1. Please refer to this information during the preparation of your proposal.

All proposals must be returned to Claire Wilkinson at by 5pm on Monday 18thMarch2013.

All successful applicants will be notified by 5pm on Monday 25thMarch 2013.

Please note: one further call for proposals will be published in June 2013. In subsequent academic years, it is anticipated the calls will be published during September and March.

Contact Name
Department
Contact details / Email / Tel. Extension
Which funding stream are you applying to (please tick the relevant box):
1. Departmental WP fund: to support the delivery of small- to medium-scale projects/events involving contributions from a single department. The maximum amount that can be requested is £2,500.
2. Collaborative fund: to support the delivery of larger projects/events that involve collaboration between or within departments. The maximum amount that can be requested is £10,000.
3. Activity development fund: to support the development of new activities to be delivered as part of future projects/events. Additional funding for the delivery can be sought in future calls. All resultant activities must include an accompanying ‘How To’ guide that could be used by colleagues in the future. The maximum amount that can be requested is £2,500.
4. Equipment: these funds can be used to purchase pieces of equipment to be used for widening participation activity. The maximum amount that can be requested is £2,500.
Please note:
  • Eligible costs within streams 1, 2 and 3 include, but are not limited to: staff buy-out; payment of students; travel expenses; purchase of consumables.
  • Applicants may request funds from multiple streams in combination as follows: 1 plus 4; 2 plus 4; or 3 plus 4. However, the amount requested from each stream must be clearly indicated within the ‘Justification for Resources’ and should not exceed the limit for the stream in question (e.g. £2,500 for streams 1, 3 and 4, and £10,000 for stream 2).
  • Funding stream 4 is intended to support the creation of a bank of equipment that is available to all faculty members for use in widening participation activity. Therefore, successful applicants will be expected to make these resources available to other colleagues. A register of these resources will be held by the Faculty Outreach Team and made accessible to all staff.

Please provide a brief outline of the proposed activity (max 350 words):
Which age group(s) will this activity be targeted at?Please tick all relevant boxes.
If you are unsure of the target audience for your proposed activity, please contact Claire Wilkinson at prior to submission of this proposal.
Aged 5 to 7
(Key Stage 1: school years 1 and 2)
Aged 7 to 11
(Key stage 2: school years 3 to 6)
Aged 11 to 14
(Key stage 3: school years 7 to 9)
Aged 14 to 16
(Key stage 4 / GCSE: school years 10 and 11)
Aged 16 to 18
(Key stage 5 / A Level: school years 12 and 13)
Aged 18 plus
For those applying to funding streams 1 and 2: have you already identified a school, college or community group to whom your activity will be delivered? If so, please provide details below. If not, please contact Claire Wilkinson at prior to submission of this proposal as we have existing groups who may be suitable for your activity.
Is this a one-off activity or will it work with a group of participants over a period of time?
When would you anticipate the activitytaking place?
What is the total cost of your proposal? Please indicate if you have secured any additional funding to support your proposal.
Please provide a brief justification of resources (max 350 words) detailing the main budget elements.
Do you require support from the Faculty Outreach Team to manage and deliver this activity? If so, please contact Claire Wilkinson (), to discuss your needs prior to submission of this proposal.
In signing this form, the Project Lead commits to providing monitoring information required by OFFA, should the proposal be successful.
Signed (Project Lead):
Signed (Head of Department):
Guidance on targeting for Faculty WP Plans
Ability:
Ideally we are looking to work with students who have the potential to achieve grades that would be acceptable to the University of Sheffield. This means that we do not raise aspirations and expectations of young people only to turn them down at the point of application. Please take this into account when targeting students to participate in any programmes.
Specific WP Indicators:
Every year the University is judged on performance against HESA Performance Indicator benchmarks. The results of this are published in the national press and Times Higher. The indicators are also used as targets within our Access Agreement to the Office for Fair Access. WP activities should therefore be targeted at at least one of the following indicators:
  • Students from Low Participation Neighbourhoods (based on POLAR data)
  • Students from state schools
  • Students from low socio-economic backgrounds (not easy to target but we can use family income or the IMD score of where they live as a very rough proxy)
  • Students with a disability
  • Mature Students
In addition, we are keen to target the following groups:
  • Looked after children / care leavers
  • Students who would be the first in their family to enter higher education
  • Students from minority ethnic groups (where there is felt to be an under-representation only – BME is not always classed as a WP target audience)

Age
Our Access Agreement for 2012/13 states that we will prioritise the development of post-16 intensive programme. This was written with a view to working with students who might be persuaded to apply to the University within the next couple of years. Longer term we will aim to offer those programmes to younger students too, so that the programmes become more long term.
However, there will be cases where it is not appropriate to target post-16 students, where to have an impact we need to be working with younger pupils. For example, activities targeting modern languages students may be more effectively targeted at young pupils in Year 8 and Year 9 pupils, before they go on to make GCSE choices. This is perfectly acceptable.
Retention
OFFA funding can be used to support retention activity for students from under-represented groups as well as supporting the pre-entry activity that we do to attract students from those groups. As the University has an overall good record of retention and progression of students (including degree outcome and employability) we typically do not put as much emphasis on this in our Access Agreements. However, if a faculty or individual department feels that there are particular retention issues that they would like to address through this source of funding, there is no reason why this should not be the case.
Monitoring requirements:
The University needs to demonstrate that it has used its ‘OFFA budget’ in order to attract a larger number of students from WP backgrounds into selective HEIs and onto selective degree programmes. Records must therefore be kept to monitor and report on the activity, accordingly, based on numbers of participants, numbers of schools, target groups, level of activity ...
However, it is not always possible when delivering outreach programmes to ensure that 100% of the group meet WP criteria. Under Aimhigher, and according to HEFCE targeting guidelines the more intensive a programme was the easier it should be to target students appropriately, via application forms etc. The guidance set a minimum of 70% of any given group being from one of the under-represented groups in HE (based on the indicators already stated). This is a reasonable guideline to follow for our OFFA budget and related activities where it is not possible or appropriate to have very specific selection processes in place.