Access and Outreach 2023-24
September 2023 marked the beginning of one of the most energetic years to date for Emmanuel’s Access and Outreach work: thanks to the excellent fundraising done as part of the Emma Enables campaign, we created a two-person team comprising of the new Outreach and Widening Participation Coordinator role and the Schools Liaison Officer. This has enabled us to not only increase the number of students reached, but to effectively develop new multi-intervention Outreach initiatives that aim to work consistently with select groups of highly able students from widening participation backgrounds.
Working Directly with Our Link Area Schools
The volume of school requests to visit Emmanuel have remained high this year, and so we have trialled a new multi-school model whereby schools are grouped together and invited to Emmanuel for year-group specific “taster days”, fostering a culture of information sharing amongst our link area schools. As a result, between November and April we have been able to welcome 22 schools and over 700 students to the College, which is nearly 40% more students than last academic year, but across a more concise number of dates.
A strength of Emmanuel’s Outreach work is our commitment to personally visiting our link area schools in Essex and Sheffield to develop our relationship with teachers and local communities. In September, a team of brilliant undergraduate “EMMbassadors” travelled with us to a total of 23 schools, sharing insights into student life at Emmanuel and myth-busting about Cambridge. In March we organised our biggest Schools Tour to date, visiting over 2000 students across 24 schools, but with a focus on building a sustained relationship with groups of highly able students at our top priority schools. For example, having met with the Headteacher of Fir Vale School in Sheffield last year, 17 Year 10 students were selected to participate in our session about the importance of A-Level subject choices for different Higher Education courses; a teacher reported that “[Francesca and Tom] really got on the students' level and have already had an impact inspiring them about university”. This group of Year 10s are subsequently scheduled to visit Cambridge in July for a day of aspiration-raising activities.
Link Area Programme
This year, recommendations from the Office for Students have emphasised the need for universities to support attainment -- as well as aspiration -- raising work in schools. Therefore, we have begun developing more subject-specific programmes that support the development of students’ academic skillsets, in order for them to make a competitive university application. A key example is our Link Area Programme: across six weeks, 25 Year 12 students from Sheffield and Essex accessed a series of exclusive online lectures curated by Emmanuel Fellows, completed an essay and supervision on a subject area of their choice, and had weekly mentoring sessions with EMMbassadors. These students and their Guardians were then invited to a Celebration Day at Emmanuel: the day was attended by the Master, Senior Tutor, Fellows and EMMbassadors, and Emmanuel’s welcoming and collaborative community was in full swing.
Excitingly, the Link Area Programme is planned to develop into Emmanuel’s first in-house Outreach residential in 2025, which will provide a more sustained and immersive experience of Emmanuel life for future Year 12 participants. Crucially, this would not be possible without the generosity of alumni who have committed to funding the residential.
Langevity
This year we launched an ambitious new Outreach programme, “Langevity”, in response to growing university-wide concerns about the dwindling numbers of applicants to language courses, which reflects a worrying trend in the diminishing of language learning in UK schools. It was extremely positive therefore, despite this challenging landscape, that over 300 students from across the country applied for a place on the programme, which is designed to introduce students from Yr10, 11, and 12 to a range of languages and language-oriented courses here at Cambridge. From Spanish and Japanese to Biblical Hebrew and New Testament Greek, Emmanuel’s Fellows and Postgraduate Researchers have come together to deliver crash courses in their respective disciplines.
This joining of forces has proven to be such a success already that other Colleges and the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages have enquired about collaborating on an expanded version of Langevity for 2025. Furthermore, following a generous donation from Emmanuel alumni, we are thrilled to be offering a fully funded in-person visit day to 40 of the 300 applicants, who have been selected based on academic merit and widening participation criteria.
Looking Ahead
As of May 2024, the Emmanuel Outreach team has worked with over 6000 students from nearly 400 different schools. Whilst the number of schools and students we have worked with this year is a huge achievement, the goal for next academic year is to expand initiatives such as the Link Area Programme and Langevity into schemes with residential components. Whilst more resource intensive, residential programmes are shown to be one of the most impactful Outreach interventions in terms of aspiration-raising amongst young people. By opening its doors to such programmes, Emmanuel will continue to promote itself as an inclusive and accessible University environment.
Emmanuel Review, 2024