How inclusion drives Hopwood Hall College

DB: The College has a vision to bring out the best in everyone. But when there are pockets of deprivation, how do you inspire these people to engage with you?

GB: One of the things I loved about Hopwood was that we have the full breadth of qualifications available to students. This means we have the educational opportunity that’s the right size for any student right now. If you look at an institution and you can’t see anything that’s relevant for you right now, you’re not going to be walking through the door because you would feel like it’s not the right place for you. But this breadth allows someone to say, “you know what? I’m here and that’s OK. And this is where I’m going to start.”

I already see the College as inspiring, whether it’s an entry-level qualification or a university degree.

JH: I think stories are where the wider thinking comes to life.

Recently, I ran into a young person who I’d first met last year as they achieved a Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award. They were within a group of hair and beauty students who had many of the disadvantages that we’ve talked about in relation to their own lived experiences. We created a programme for them that included a DofE Bronze Award—which many thought would never be achievable for them. We made it engaging and relevant and made them feel included.

When I ran into this student, it was evident that they’ve achieved and progressed. They’re still in education and looking at a completely different area of study. They had a very confident conversation with me about what they wanted to do, what their summer was like, and are a completely transformed young person because of how we have tried to recognise what barriers were in place.

This is really special, but it’s normal for us to do that. It’s not extraordinary that my staff would want to be able to adapt, remove barriers, think outside of the box, put an individual front and centre to make sure they’ve had every opportunity that we can offer. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but where it does, that’s life-changing.

This is just one story.

With our Queen’s Anniversary Prize being for widening participation, we started to do lots of summer transition projects, including for those furthest away from education. We knew there was a rising number of home-educated young people, which was our focus. Around 70 of these young people attended the summer school and it was probably one of the most challenging transition schools we’ve ever done. Some of them haven’t stepped foot in a school for a year, if not longer, and yet, they came to Hopwood. Some just for half an hour, some did the whole programme. Some have now enrolled at college.

DB: There are clearly a lot of barriers that leaders must overcome. What do you think are the biggest challenges that employers face to be more inclusive – not just in the FE sector, but wider?

GB: The biggest challenge that I often find, and that is mentioned a lot, is pipeline. How do you get better representation of people in certain jobs, particularly the top jobs? We know statistically that organisations that have gender-diverse top teams or ethnically culturally diverse top teams outperform those that are less diverse by a significant margin. But there must be a pipeline. And it might be easy to feel like that pipeline is not your responsibility because it is such a big issue – it’s systemic – it’s societal – and so some people might just feel it’s too big of a problem.

My narrative is always that there are big things that affect us all, but that doesn’t mean to say that we don’t have any control. Let’s work diligently with focus, with commitment, with discipline, and keep on focusing on the things that we can control because the more time we spend in that space, the more we can affect positive change. The more positive change that we affect, the bigger the pipeline, the bigger the representation, the bigger the inclusivity. Some of it’s hard, but the prize is worth it, so let’s keep going!

JH: Everything that Gary said absolutely resonates with the FE sector too. Everybody wants their staff body to reflect the communities being served. It’s so powerful to be familiar with somebody’s characteristics and thinking “well if they can do that, I can do that too”. We want our staff to think this too, but it’s hard– and I’m not making excuses here. Recruiting in FE is tough. Maybe you need an engineer to teach engineering or a cyber specialist to teach cyber. Their industries pay so well that they have to make a big economic decision to come and be a teacher. In Rochdale, general attainment levels make it harder to attract them.