University Provost discusses proposals for universities to run schools
The University’s Provost Professor Mark Peel has written a piece for the Times Educational Supplement discussing the Government’s consultation paper ‘Schools that work for everyone’ – asking whether universities should also be required to run a school.
The paper proposes that universities should commit to creating a new school or sponsoring an academy in exchange for being permitted to charge fees of over £6,000 a year to help widen access to Higher Education.
While welcoming the paper’s focus on partnership between schools and universities, Professor Peel questions an approach that privileges the sponsoring of school and highlights the broader range of work that universities are already doing with schools, in particular the University of Leicester’s longstanding and ongoing engagements with local schools and our over £6 million a year investment in scholarships outreach and support targeted at “non-traditional” students.