Title:
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Widening access : is it fair?
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Physiotherapy remains a predominately white and middle class profession even
after a decade of 'New Labour' government policies that were aimed at
widening participation in HE. Barriers to access to HE and the physiotherapy
profession are complex and wide-ranging and include the individual student's
achievements and attitude to HE, institutional, departmental, and professional
cultures and the way admissions staff interpret the policy directions that come
from government. There may also be barriers to 'widening access' inadvertently
created by a 'fair access' agenda. This thesis investigates access to pre-
registration physiotherapy education, and in doing so probes the different and
often confusing ways in which notions such as widening access and fair access
are interpreted.
This research analyses pertinent government policy documents and guidelines
to understand the meaning that higher education policy makers give to the
terms widening access and fair access, and the principles of equality used in
their formulation. The structural barriers to entry to an undergraduate
physiotherapy programme are examined. Interviews and concept mapping with
many of the admissions tutors working on England's undergraduate full-time
physiotherapy programmes are used to gain an understanding of the opinions
and behaviours of admissions tutors and institutions.
The research demonstrates how the equal opportunities model of equality still
predominates as the backdrop to how widening access and fair access
agendas are interpreted. Since equal opportunities relies on procedural
fairness, the result is that widening access remains a separated and secondary
issue to procedural fairness, and therefore a conclusion that widening access is
not fair. If society wants to see more parity in participation in higher education
and physiotherapy education in particular, then admissions tutors and
institutions will need to move and embrace a position closer to a equality of
condition model. In conclusion the study presents recommendations on how to
move towards more inclusive widening access.
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