On Monday 4 January, the Prime Minister announced that all schools and colleges will be closed from Tuesday 5 January 2021, as England moves into a third national lockdown. It is the utmost priority of both CAVA and the QAA to ensure that we continue to support all Access to HE Diploma students.

The QAA have advised course providers to continue to apply the current arrangements for the Access to HE Diploma in 2020-21, as published in September 2020. These arrangements were designed to enable course providers to be flexible in teaching and assessing the Access to HE Diploma, so that adaptations can be made as necessary under this and any future lockdowns. You can read their most recent announcement for students here.

We recognise that for many students, the additional pressures of work, caring responsibilities or illness may make study even more challenging. If you are finding it difficult to study at the moment, we recommend speaking directly with your college or course tutor in the first instance. Your college will have procedures in place to support all students under these extenuating circumstances. If you feel your academic performance is affected by the current lockdown you should let your college or course tutor know about the circumstances which are affecting your performance so that this can be taken into consideration.

For those concerned about assessments and grading, we want to reassure you all that you will receive grades for all graded units you complete and grades will not be based on estimates. Your final grades will be confirmed after the Final Awards Board at the end of the academic year.

CAVA will continue to support colleges to ensure consistency is applied across all Access to HE Diplomas awarded. We hope this update brings you some clarity and reassurance with regards to the future of your Access to HE course.

For further information and guidance…

The QAA will continue to provide updates on the Access to HE website.

You can also read the QAA FAQs via this link.

The QAA will be offering a series of webinars from 7 January 2021 which will explain the arrangements for the award of QAA-recognised Access to HE Diplomas in 2020-21 and provide an opportunity for students to feedback on the arrangements. These sessions can be booked on the QAA website.

It is with a profound mix of emotions that I share my transition from the role of CEO at CAVA over the next six months. I will be moving on to build my own coaching and consulting business.

Serving as the CEO of this fantastic organisation for more than four years has been a privilege and honour. Together, we have accomplished remarkable milestones during a period of unprecedented turbulence and worked tirelessly to advance our mission of enabling adults to achieve their aspirations through education.

I want to assure you that the CAVA Board and I are working closely to ensure a seamless transition that safeguards the continuity of CAVA’s operations. Recruitment is now open for the new CEO to take CAVA forward to our next stage of development. The CAVA Board is seeking a leader who shares our passion, possesses excellent strategic and operational skills, and has a proven track record of inspiring positive change. Please refer to the recruitment pack for detailed information on the role.

The aim is to have the new CEO onboard by Summer 2024, with a structured handover period supported by myself as the outgoing CEO. Throughout this transition, I will continue to lead CAVA, supported by our exceptional team, Board, and governance committees. We will inform you once an appointment is made.

Should you have any questions or require further clarification regarding this transition, please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly via f.raffai@cava.ac.uk.

Thank you for your support, dedication, and collaboration. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with our incredible CAVA staff team and committees, our dedicated external moderators and subject experts, and our inspiring FE and HE members. I am sure that the CAVA community will continue to thrive under new leadership and achieve even greater heights in pursuit of our shared mission.

Big Issue seller accepted to Cambridge University after life on the streets

Cambridge Evening News coverage of successful two Access to HE students from Cambridge Regional College who gained places at Hughes Hall,  University of Cambridge. External link to newspaper website.

As a membership organisation, one of CAVA’s strategic aims is to provide a full package of support for our Access to HE providers. As part of our programme of staff development training activities in 2021 and 2022, we ran two sessions on assessment theory and practice to provide practitioners with opportunities to develop and enhance their practice.

For our first session in 2021, we worked with Cambridge Assessment Network (which provides professional development to the assessment community) to offer bespoke training for Access to HE practitioners on the key principles in the design and delivery of valid assessment. Topics included the purposes and principles of good assessment, valid assessment design, approaches to marking and grading, and providing effective feedback to students. Participants were encouraged to debate whether standards would be improved if assessment was more standardised. We also considered the inherent tensions within assessment design, in balancing the manageability, reliability and validity of assessments.

The second session bridged the gap between assessment theory, general practice, and specific Access to HE assessment development and design, through a practical networking event which brought together practitioners to reflect upon their practice and identify areas for development within their own assessments. Participants discussed the multiple purposes of assessment feedback: clarifying achievement; reflection and improvement; confidence-building and motivation; and considered real-life cases which could have been improved by developing their feedback to cover these different purposes. Participants also considered different strategies to encourage students to engage with feedback, ranging from sequencing assessments to creating opportunities for sustained development of skills through feedback, sharing tutors’ own experience of working with feedback to model behaviours, to using audio/video feedback.

Attendees welcomed the opportunities to speak with practitioners from other providers and explore the principles involved in unit construction and assignment brief design. However, there was a general call for even more practical advice; to “know the correct answers” and receive advice or guidance on the development of markschemes to support the application of the QAA grading scheme. In the follow-up assessment workshop in 2022, we gave participants the opportunity to work through the key stages of assessment design (administration, design, marking approaches and assessment planning), and begin to think about marking schemes that might support tutors’ interpretations of the national grade descriptors. CAVA members can access the resources and video recordings from both sessions in the ‘Resources’ section of the CAVA Members’ Area.

At CAVA, we strive to ensure we offer highly relevant and valuable Access to HE Diplomas. We are in the process of creating a library of assessment briefs for units within our Access to HE Diplomas frameworks to offer even more opportunities to share good practice in assessment across our membership.

QAA is currently reviewing the Grading Scheme for the Access to HE Diploma, which includes consideration of realignment of the existing grade descriptors. We are keen to provide further opportunities for practitioners and moderation to develop their assessment practice and expand upon our assessment guidance for our members. We look forward to the outcome of the QAA’s review and will be reviewing our assessment strategy and guidance in line with the future grading model.

HE21+programme

HE21+ is a collaborative outreach and mentoring programme between Lucy Cavendish College (in partnership with the other mature Cambridge Colleges) and the University of Cambridge itself. The project provides Further Education Colleges and their students, who are currently studying an Access to Humanities/ Social Sciences for humanities and PBS, with a sustained programme which provides an opportunity to experience typical undergraduate teaching at the University of Cambridge, information and guidance sessions and two trips to Lucy Cavendish College.

The event aims to:

·         Increase the participation rates of mature learners to Higher Education

·         Enhance the confidence and self-belief of mature learners

·         Improve soft skills

·         Provide students with an opportunity to sample subject areas that may be unfamiliar to them or one that they have little experience of studying

You can find out more information, including the booking form here: https://www.lucy-cav.cam.ac.uk/admissions/visiting-the-college/he-programme

QAA has launched Career Coach, an online tool that helps match prospective students with the Access to HE programme that best supports their professional ambitions.

Many Access to HE students choose their programmes based on their career goals. Now, for the first time, Career Coach will help users search for Access to HE courses linked to their chosen careers, highlighting the skills and knowledge needed to enter particular job roles and industries.

This interactive tool uses the latest labour market data to offer information on average and potential wages, and latest job vacancies. It also highlights the current demand for jobs and professions in each region.

Its key features include:

• Career Assessments, helping people to learn more about themselves and access career suggestions based on their interests and skills

• Up-to-date data on wages, employment opportunities and common progression routes

• A search function for Access to HE courses that will help you reach your career goals

• A CV Builder to create a professional and modern CV

Users can also sign up for an account to save information about their career search so far.

Career Coach is hosted by EMSI. For more information about Career Coach and to try it for yourself, visit the Access to HE site.

Access to HE Conference

5 December 2017

Møller Centre, Churchill College, University of Cambridge  

Meet fellow Access to HE practitioners from across the regions to discuss Access to HE developments and enjoy networking opportunities and the excellent hospitality of the Møller Centre

Welcome and introduction

Tom Levinson

Head of Widening Participation, The University of Cambridge, and Acting Chair of CAVA

Keynote Speaker

David Hughes, Chief Executive, Association of Colleges

Access developments 2016-17 and key messages

Jill Cox, CEO, CAVA
Emily Ross, Quality Manager, CAVA

Presentation of the CAVA Student Awards for Outstanding Achievement and Commitment to Study

Workshops including:

• Learning to learn digitally
• Subject workshops to share good practice
• Land-based focus group
• HE Partnerships group

Who should attend?

• Access to HE practitioners and managers
• HE admission tutors and academic staff in universities and other HEIs
• Quality managers in FE and HE
• Widening participation and outreach officers in FE and HE
• People working in the wider FE/HE field – researchers, academics, policy makers and curriculum managers
• Organisations and charities concerned with opening up opportunities for people from non-traditional education backgrounds

To book please email admin@cava.ac.uk

CAVA Access to HE Diploma – Award winners

The CAVA Student Awards celebrate student achievement and excellence in 2018, and the winners are nominated for the national KeithFletcher prize. The Keith Fletcher Award is an annual, national award for excellence in Access to HE. There are two categories, ‘Outstanding Academic Achievement’ and ‘Outstanding Commitment to Study’. The Outstanding Academic Achievement prize recognises those students who consistently displayed an exceptional level of academic aptitude, knowledge and understanding. The Outstanding Commitment to Study prize recognises students who have undergone a significant personal, as well as academic journey, often in the face of adversity and challenging personal circumstances.

Keith Fletcher Regional Award – Outstanding Commitment to Study

• CAVA Winner:       Kimberley Quant, Cornwall College, Access to HE Diploma (Nursing)
• CAVA Runner-up: Gareth Palmer, City College Norwich, Access to HE (Engineering)

Keith Fletcher Regional Award – Outstanding Academic Achievement

• CAVA Winner:        Rebecca Rigby, Petroc College, Access to HE Diploma (Humanities)
• CAVA Runner-up:  Zac Major, Bournemouth and Poole College, Access to HE Diploma (Science)

The CAVA annual conference 2018 will be held at the Møller Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge on Thursday 29 November 2018. We look forward to meeting up with all our members.